Amazon has a problem with fake reviews and it seems they are ok with it. I bought a replacement screen from Amazon and it wasn’t working properly. I thought I did something wrong so I contacted the seller/manufacturer and they told: oh yeah, it‘s defective, we‘ll just give you your money back. I agreed and then the person said „cool, now in order to process your request, please click these buttons on Amazon” and they…
As an economics grad, I always wondered why online reviews existed at all. There's no skin in the game for anyone. If your neighbor recommends you a crap lawnmower, he'll have to explain to you why he thought it was good. You can ask him questions and compare his motivations to yours. He'll also end up living next to a badly mowed lawn if he doesn't put some work into it. The seller has every reason to pay people to…
Outside the realm of phones, I've also been burned on camera equipment. I ordered a Nikon 200-500mm telephoto lens a few years back, which was represented as sold by Nikon. It proved not to be - by its serial number, it was actually a gray-market item intended for the Chinese market. That wouldn't happen with a sale direct from the manufacturer, and it also totally invalidates the otherwise very good manufacturer's warranty. It's a great copy of the lens and of new enough manufacture to have got past the teething problems, so I kept it. But that was the last time I bought something that pricey on Amazon, too.
Nikon's policies are what they are, and have been that way for longer than I've been alive. They're not what I have a problem with here. Amazon is, and at this point I'd only even consider doing business with them on similar terms to what you describe - small-ticket stuff that I don't really care if it's not what the seller claims it is.
But then, on the other hand, that leaves Amazon with no point for me at all. In the months since I placed my last order there, I've found small business e-commerce to be alive and thriving, and you know what? It turns out that when you place an order with Spice Place or Betty Mills or B&H or Adorama or whoever, yeah it takes a little longer to show up, but also what's in the box will reliably be what you bought! Wild, right? Even books, now, I get from Indiebound, or Ebay for obscure out-of-print stuff that's hard to find from regular booksellers. And for the basic staples of living, there are plain old regular stores. You can just walk into buildings and buy food and tools and things! You don't have to wait for anyone.
At this point, I'm about two-thirds seriously convinced that the whole Prime experience with next-day delivery is as harmful to the customer as it is to the drivers and to the neighborhoods increasingly choked with navy-blue panel vans. I know it exerted an unhealthy hold over my thinking for a lot longer than I'd have preferred in retrospect. It remains wild to me that Amazon found a way to make small-business ecommerce and brick-and-mortar retail look more appealing than itself, but they've certainly done a solid job of it, and I hope they keep it up.