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Shopping Sucks Now

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Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#61

Post by gumby »

This is what branding is all about: you can't really tell but you know brand 'B' hasn't let you down so just choose that again.

Of course then the tail began to wag the cow* and the brand became the point; product value became irrelevant. Still it's probably the least terrible way to choose. I want a USB power brick but brand 'N' doesn't sell something that meets my desires: I'll wait.

* chose cow rather than dog because I doubt farmers used to actually brand (German for "burn") their symbol on their dog.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#62

Post by basseq »

floren wrote: post #14
basseq wrote: post #4

That "tyranny of perfect information" begets FOMO. If you'd looked at one more site or one more review you might have discovered a "better" (cheaper, high quality, higher utility) item. I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman?…

> Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk. The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba…

Right! So why should I pay for crap, or the other way around, why should I overpay for good quality, if I can get a solid substitute for less?

For example, I'm shopping for landscape lighting right now. You can spend a lot on landscape lighting. A nice bronze spotlight from a "good" brand like Kichler can run you $100+ ea.[1], and I need 8–10 of them.

Conversely, I can get an 6-pack of albeit-plastic spotlights off Amazon from a Chinese company for 40 bucks, with 4.5 stars and 252 reviews.[2]

I am getting ripped off with Kichler? I am getting crap from Zuckeo? Who knows!?

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Kichler-16012BBR30-10-Degree-3000K-Br...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/ZUCKEO-Landscape-Spotlight-Decorative...

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#63

Post by paggle »

jkhwleroiu wrote: post #41
papreclip wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brick and mortar shops can't stop you from coming in and finding the perfect item, then buying it online to save money. I bought an office chair recently and didn't feel confident picking one without trying chairs out in person. The chair I settled on was $100 cheaper online

I wouldn't mind paying a few pounds for them to let me browse the products. Maybe this is a viable business model.

Another approach is the manufacturer showroom. They don't care where you buy it so they just try to induce the demand.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#64

Post by 0xffff2 »

arkitaip wrote: post #59
mikeyouse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brandless is pursuing something down this line: https://brandless.com/

Brandless makes no sense to me. They mostly buy from China and their products are more expensive than they should be (their product descriptions don't offer any arguments why, at least). They claim to be health and environmentally-conscious but there's no relevant information to read on the product pages. Take this random Brandless product: https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner Why on Earth wou…

Why wouldn't you buy it? It's a $4 kitchen spoon. What could you possibly want to know?

Edit: A bit of poking around suggests that Acacia is a fairly sustainable source of wood, so I would guess that's the thing that makes it eco-friendly. Some of their other acacia products do mention this, but the spoon doesn't for some reason.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#65

Post by basseq »

basseq wrote: post #62
floren wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman? But then when the version from Alibaba is total crap, there's no recourse. It's not like a local shop with reputation at risk. The unfortunate reality these days is that the majority of items on, say, Amazon, are the same crap from Alibaba…

Right! So why should I pay for crap, or the other way around, why should I overpay for good quality, if I can get a solid substitute for less? For example, I'm shopping for landscape lighting right now. You can spend a lot on landscape lighting. A nice bronze spotlight from a "good" brand like Kichler can run you $100+ ea.[1], and I need 8–10 of them. Conversely, I can get an 6-pack of albeit-plastic spotlights off A…

And this goes the other way, too. In the same vein as lighting, I was trying to find a simple, modern, LED vanity fixture.

You can get builder-grade and often-ugly crap from Home Depot (see also: Brands not being an indicator of quality), or spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars on designer pieces.

I ended up finding one I really liked off a no-name website, with the product shipped from Hong Kong for like $80. Solid metal, reasonable-looking electronics, arrived in 2 weeks, good communication... very happy!

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#66

Post by frogpelt »

The silly thing about all of this is when you are buying physical products, they actually exist somewhere.

You can (or at least should be able to) go to a store look at the product, try it on, look at the quality first hand and then buy them.

But we've accepted that it's better to save 25% or 50% so that we can avoid the inconvenience of actual shopping.

Furthermore, there are brands that make good stuff and have good customer service, stick to those brands until they prove to be untrustworthy.

Don't reward Amazon just for building a nice website.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#67

Post by bartread »

Sorry, but I just can't get on board with this point of view.

Shopping has always sucked. Badly. Going to the shops has to be one of the single most annoying and unpleasant day to day experiences I deal with[1].

If you live anywhere even remotely populous when you visit the shops there are people milling around just ####ing everywhere. Dithering, dawdling, standing around chatting at every choke point in the aisles, demonstrating a spectacular lack of spatial awareness - but, honestly, who can blame them when the entire environment is so overstimulating and overcrowded?

And after all this there's a damn good chance you're not going to find what you want anyway.

I dare anyone to visit a department store in a city for half an hour on a Saturday and come out afterwards without having entertained a single murderous thought.

But nowadays I can do a bit of research online, which might be quick or might take a while depending on what I want, find exactly what I want, find somewhere that sells it (generally not Amazon because I just don't trust them that much these days), and either order it for delivery, or click and collect (very handy at places like Screwfix, Toolstation, and B&Q).

It's just way less stressful and way more pleasant. I mean, still not necessarily the most fun thing in the world, but it makes shopping suck a lot less.

[1] There are clearly far worse problems to have, and this may be a #firstworldproblem, but in terms of the normal humdrum routine of daily life, visiting the shops often really sucks.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#68

Post by OnlineGladiator »

JohnFen wrote: post #44
smacktoward wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the key to the article can be found in this passage: > [T]he problem is that now, somewhat suddenly, perfect knowledge of the perfect glove, for you specifically, exists, if you simply do enough research. When you're shopping in a physical store, you have no expectation that you're going to find the absolute, one-and-only perfect glove (or whatever) in the world for you. Even in the largest stores, you unders…

I think your comment makes really excellent points. This line: > The infinite variety of online shopping tells us to set our expectations higher than that. made me think a bit -- that used to be true for me, but the effect is trending in the opposite direction now. I have learned that it's very nearly impossible to tell if a product being shown is actually any good or not unless I'm already familiar with that company…

Being overwhelmed with choice is known as analysis paralysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis

https://xkcd.com/1801/

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#69

Post by chrisweekly »

smacktoward wrote: post #32
egypturnash wrote: post #12

When I was living in the PNW and realized I direly needed gloves, I just hit up a few of the department stores downtown until I found some that met my criteria. Which are probably similar to those of this author, I wanted some that looked cute, had a conductive patch on the finger so I could use my phone without taking them off, would fit on my long hands with long fingernails, and weren’t super expensive gloves desi…

I think the key to the article can be found in this passage: > [T]he problem is that now, somewhat suddenly, perfect knowledge of the perfect glove, for you specifically, exists, if you simply do enough research. When you're shopping in a physical store, you have no expectation that you're going to find the absolute, one-and-only perfect glove (or whatever) in the world for you. Even in the largest stores, you unders…

Yes, this.

In general, more choices don't make you happier -- in fact they usually have the opposite effect.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#70

Post by P_I_Staker »

umvi wrote: post #23
ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #2

Something that has been lost is genuine reviews. First you have all the sponsored reviews and then all the equally worthless "I don't know how to use it so it's junk" or "it never arrived" 1 star reviews. And so many "review" sites look like they've been procedurally generated then SEO optimized and filled with ads.

Currently I only trust reddit for "genuine" reviews. Seems like Amazon reviews these days are gamed to the max. Once companies figure this out and reddit has a high degree of astroturf it will be impossible to find out what normal, unbiased (as in don't have an agenda) humans think about a product.

I suspect reviews have been gamed for some time. Now it seems like all reviews are always gamed. I even have a conspiracy theory that Amazon is gaming Costco products. A number of their household products have had sub-3 star reviews; seems suspicious. I still feel somewhat confident in products with over 1k reviews. The same goes for reading a few reviews and "trusting" the helpful ones to some extent.
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