If the competition involves other Trillion-or-so USD companies, than this is another step in the process of concentration of capital in society - as is the ascendance of Amazon. The amount of power Amazon already has in society is obscenely huge - even if it's not expressed in the form of giant portraits of Jeff Bezos hanging from the sides of buildings.
The Anti-Amazon Alliance
371–380 of 419 posts
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#372Good article. There are a few unknowns still. 1. Is Google really all in on product search? Their product search is pretty bad at the moment and it's a very challenging search space, esp when you work with tens of thousands of retailers. Going directly to retailer/niche-platform sites usually works better for me. For example, for music related I go to reverb.com, for outdoor to rei.com, etc. I then to Google and Amaz…
Using Amazon for reviews seems ironic to me. Product reviews highlight Amazon's single biggest weakness: trust. You can't trust any Amazon review. Many of Amazon's other failings also center around trust.
I wonder how the trustworthy review issue could actually be solved in a non-gameable way. Is this even possible? Truly unbiased opinion?
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * For electronics there is microcenter.com, frys.com, tigerdirect.com, circuitcity.com, and many many more.* Definitely drop frys.com from the list, they are going out of business. Actually, except for microcenter.com, I wouldn't buy from the others either. newegg.com seems to have the best attribute filtering by far.
Wow... didn't know that. Haven't been back to the US in years. End of an era... I built several computers from trips to Frys.
Yeah, it is a shame.
I've been purposely going to Microcenter, and buying stuff there in the hopes that they'll stay in business. There's no other computer stores in the area of note.
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#374People in tech vastly overestimate the amount of people who dislike Amazon. Your Average Joe could not be happier with Amazon and does not give a second thought to their business practices or worker treatment.
Yess.
Amazon works, proved it works in a serious global crisis, does better job than that other "service" that takes a lot of your paycheck. Now you maybe can't get some niche item, or you shop stupid, doesn't mean it's not a wonderful service and perfectly valid utility.
Amazon is a company that does actual stuff, it's not just software that should have "better product search".
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#375Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blades and a router?) and b) price. Implicit in this was authenticity and good customer service -- for me, if the product isn't the real thing, or the company is a nightmare to deal with, it's a non-starter. Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products…
> the Ring Doorbell You can build something much, much better with about $100 with a Raspberry Pi, depending I guess on the camera quality. Are there any features unique to the Ring? I am an advocate of using something like RPi's for Computer Science in Africa but I am a missionary without a following (thank goodness there isn't another crank like me going to central Africa).
Ring is battery powered, with a battery life of 4 weeks.
It may not be obvious to someone not experienced in the design of battery-powered electronics, but that much battery life from a device with wifi and streaming video is very impressive - they must be making extremely good use of low-power sleep modes on their CPU, radio and camera.
Being battery powered means it can be self-installed, even by people who don't know a serial terminal from a screw terminal.
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last year I made 349 orders on Amazon and cannot think of a single time I got a counterfeit item or felt tricked by the reviews. I would really like to wonder of the people encountering frequent fake products on Amazon, what categories are you shopping in? Is it fashion items or something similar? My main Amazon purchases are household items/toiletries and then hobby electronic parts. I haven't had any issues with th…
My distrust of Amazon started when I had a baby. It felt like about 80% of the stuff I ordered at first was junk. Maybe not fake, I don't know, maybe I was just being too trusting with what I was ordering, but either way it was total junk. So I started reading reviews a lot more carefully. This didn't help, I still just got junk. So then I started only ordering things from brand names I recognized. A couple times I m…
Just get a little step, it's all my boys needed.
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#377Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blades and a router?) and b) price. Implicit in this was authenticity and good customer service -- for me, if the product isn't the real thing, or the company is a nightmare to deal with, it's a non-starter. Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products…
> I will say their customer service has almost w/o exception been stellar
At individual level, I’ve markedly experienced degraded customer service in last 1 year. For instance, I have to deal with hassles in cases where product sold by amazon (not 3rd party) had defect. The key reason I moved to Amazon bandwagon was: no hassles.
To me, Amazon’s day 2 looks likely now.
It was great while it lasted.
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#378>as John Gruber put it on Daring Fireball, “Amazon isn’t hurting for revenue (especially now), but they are hurting for trust.” This is empirically false. Amazon is the second most-trusted brand in America . https://morningconsult.com/most-trusted-brands/ It's wild how easily SV types will tweet things like "No one trusts Amazon!" when the reality outside the Bay Area is so radically and demonstrably opposite.
Also, according to the 2020 Tech survey via Vox Media, who is highly critical of tech: 91% have a favorable view of Amazon 73% trust Amazon with their information 70% say Amazon has a positive effect on society 81% would be disappointed if Amazon disappeared https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/2/21144680/verge-tech-survey...
More people trust Microsoft than Apple with their information? What is going on there?
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've gotten fakes from Amazon, but it is not always obvious that you've got a fake. There was an article recently with pictures of the real and fake items, both from Amazon. You wouldn't know which was which even if they were side by side. But the fake will probably fall apart faster, may leak poison and is overall not what you thought to buy. And that is all aside from the issue of fake reviews, which are so prevale…
I'd still like to know what category of product you and others are talking about. I'm not in denial - just legitimately curious.
Pretty much every category on Amazon is counterfeited
https://thewirecutter.com/blog/i-bought-these-things-from-am...
Re: The Anti-Amazon Alliance
#380Way way back, when Amazon got bigger than just books, my motivation for using them was a) very good selection (in one order, I can order bagel chips, wiper blades and a router?) and b) price. Implicit in this was authenticity and good customer service -- for me, if the product isn't the real thing, or the company is a nightmare to deal with, it's a non-starter. Well now here we are. Fake reviews, counterfeit products…
one of my first ebay purchase turned out to be a fake headset. put me off them and i never bothered to look on the site again even though people said it was cheaper.
with amazon it's convenient and honestly the support (while hit and miss) is still better than the effort you get from minimum waged retail workers. i am getting annoyed at the rise in rubbish and duplicate listings though.