Used to be a brief period a few years back when you could order quality items on amazon.co.jp. All with free Prime shipping to US. Now it’s equally full of poorly designed and manufactured Chinese products.
Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
171–180 of 438 posts
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've also found myself buying a lot of things from Best Buy, something I would have scoffed at 5-7 years ago. These days, I just want to know that I'm getting a genuine (vs replica) product and most of the time I can go pick-up my purchase same day, solving the "fast shipping" problem.
Since NewEgg started up their 3rd party seller program, I've also switched to Best Buy. Running out of places to buy from that aren't flooded with trash.
> Since NewEgg started up their 3rd party seller program, I've also switched to Best Buy. Running out of places to buy from that aren't flooded with trash.
I still buy from NewEgg, but the first thing I do when I hit the search results is to click the Sold by Newegg button. Might be a few bucks more, but at least I'm getting the real deal ... at least so far.
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
BestBuy has added third party sellers online too: https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/about/selling-on-marketplace/bl... Though they don’t seem to have many yet, I did run across it recently. In-store pickup items are still seemingly safe though.
Seems to not be on the US site, for now, but that's very discouraging to see. I don't know where to turn for electronics if Best Buy goes to crap, too. (I smell a market opportunity for a retailer that sells only quality products...)
I’ve started buying electronics from B&H Photo and Provantage recently. So far I’ve been very happy and the prices are reasonable.
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#174There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…
> There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself.
Based on what? Are people investing less in marketing than before?
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon reviews. I got my fiancé two Christmas presents this year - both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5 star reviews. I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else b…
Fakespot can help reveal which products have misleading reviews https://www.fakespot.com/ Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.
I use Fakespot, and I wonder about its accuracy. Seeing a 5-star product given a `D` rating is shocking. If Fakespot is reasonably accurate, then Amazon is inexcusably bad at removing fake reviews. Amazon has orders of magnitude more developer talent and user information than Fakespot to tackle accurate ratings. But I suppose that's the reality of differing incentives...
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#176Apple and Google require developers to have some info and a persistent profile to publish an app. Every app has a publisher and I can see what else they publish, how long they’ve been around, etc. nothing extensive just letting me know that they exist and at least a mailbox or url for support.
Amazon doesn’t do this. Many of the seller pages are bogus or hard to see what they sell. I assume that since it sucks so much Amazon doesn’t care or they specifically don’t want me associating sellers with their own brands.
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#177There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…
I know my comment will be lost in a sea of voices, but I need to share my experience _somewhere_ else other than amazon reviews. I got my fiancé two Christmas presents this year - both bought off Amazon. One was an electronic keyboard that was dead on arrival, the other was a snuggie type blanket that started falling apart yesterday. Both items had thousands of 5 star reviews. I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else b…
This experience is alien to me. I order from Amazon all the time and everything I get is generally fine. Occasionally something breaks after a while or is missing a part but that can happen anywhere and Amazon has extremely generous return policies. If anything I've come to trust AmazonBasics as a reliable brand if I'm deciding between products.
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#178Journalists have never operated an ecommerce company.
In the same year, they'll publish a story about how requiring manufacturing information enables them to steal secrets from sellers.
You can't have it both ways.
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
If anything, the last few years of politics have convinced me that objective information is more likely to die out, replaced by advertising, brand recognition, and coercive tools.
An older friend of mine made the observation that really before the few large news networks and papers in the last 40-50 years objective information that everyone roughly agreed upon was not the norm. Yellow journalism, hearsay and rumors dominated common conversation. He observed that with the internet we're returning to what was this "normal" state with anybody being able to post something and gain widespread recog…
Nostalgia for the days when the NYT and co. could lie the whole nation into some war (or rather the people who read the NYT).
Re: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews
#180There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. But increasingly we seem a long way from achieving this. Amazon reviews have become such garbage, I've fallen back to pretty much relying on name brands as my placeholder for product quality. There's…
> There's a somewhat pervasive idea that advertising and brand recognition are coercive tools that will ultimately die out, replaced by better objective information about products. I'm kind of partial to this idea myself. Based on what? Are people investing less in marketing than before?
My personal experience is that many brands had a high markup on brand recognition and I used to be able to find better quality and value through no name brands that made good products. The internet is supposed to spread information well and with perfect information I should be able to differentiate true quality vs just a known brand signaling quality.
I think the problem is that places like Amazon distort information (eg, tolerate crappy reviews) because it makes them more money. The bazaar model is supposed to have some positive feedback loops to incentivize positive events, but that’s drifting away.
So I used to think that effective marketplaces would replace brands with disintermediation and perfect info. But not so much now.
This is sort of a tl;dr for why I buy Apple. They have a huge markup for brand name, but it’s exhausting to me to try to evaluate what’s the best laptop this year and I can trust Apple to probably be pretty good.