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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#191

Post by piva00 »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #180
jrs235 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even their shipping (with Prime too!) is getting slower and slower. Prime's selling point used to be free 2 day shipping. Shipping is still "free" but many items take 4 days (or more now).

>even their shipping (with Prime too!) is getting slower Not only that. Try searching while in Incognito Mode and you'll see the same products, sold by Amazon.com, without Prime, for a few bucks cheaper than when you're logged in and seeing them with "free" Prime shipping.

Thanks for validating my assumption, I encountered this twice and thought I was taking crazy pills. I don't even shop on Amazon much, like once or twice a year...

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#192

Post by mynameisvlad »

smolder wrote: post #187
mynameisvlad wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Six letter Chinese sellers" does not automatically mean cheap shitty defective rejects. If anything, that's just stereotyping and xenophobia. For every one of you, I'm sure there's a dozen who have had no issues with the product. And I'm sure there's been plenty of people who have had the same issue with a name brand product that was made in the same factory by the same process and people.

I'm not bagging on Chinese manufacturing in general, they build the worlds stuff, including super high quality+value items. Yet throwaway brands peddling junk that wouldn't have realistically made it onto the shelves of a big box store is a real problem on Amazon's marketplace, and other similar ones.

> I don't want garbage products that were sourced from the dumpster next to a Chinese factory after they make a defective batch.

> Yet throwaway brands peddling junk that wouldn't have realistically made it onto the shelves of a big box store is a real problem on Amazon's marketplace, and other similar ones.

Either it's a defective batch of products that would have been sold under a brand name or its junk that would have never been sold at all. Both of these can't be true of the same product.

I'd also argue that being sold at a big box store is not really indicative of much in the 21st century.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#194

Post by JKCalhoun »

Cloudef wrote: post #66
moolcool wrote: post #42

It runs deeper than just everything being an ad. It's also completely flooded with rebadged junk from dropshippers. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a new whetstone, and this is what I got when I searched Amazon https://i.imgur.com/1Utp2dF.png The results keep going like that. You see constant repetition of the exact same units with slightly different branding, often with the same stock photography, repeated for pa…

There's lots of these scams where they sell some non-branded goods with lots of reviews (with videos) from paid SNS influencers. Sometimes they may sell something completely else but change the listing completely (becomes obvious from the reviews again). When you see a lot of similar listing for the same product or from same store, it's giant red flag to not buy it. Sometimes these goods may be good, but often or not…

Did you know you can get an 11 Terabyte hard drive for $90 on Amazon? Wow:

https://www.amazon.com/External-Portable-11000GB-Compatible-...

(Um, yeah. And look at the reviews.)

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#195

Post by Arubis »

Amazon-the-store is mostly near-shored AliExpress + 7-Eleven at this point. That's got its uses--it's awfully convenient!--but it leaves them open to niched-down competitors that I would love to give my money.

AWS, on the other hand, feels pretty sustainable.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#196

Post by moolcool »

monetus wrote: post #188
moolcool wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully degradation of user experience will curb it somewhat. Sometimes the ads even betray themselves. Like I, as a rule, hate ads. I block them where I can, and where I can't, I do my best to ignore them. But then you get instances where the ad _is_ what you're actually looking for. Like if you search Amazon for "iPhone", you get official first party iPhone stuff from Apple, but they're sponsored listings. My p…

They have to buy their own keywords so that others aren't first in the listings right? They don't want Samsung to be the first thing you see. Hilarious and sad at the same time.

Yeah, it's one of the things I hate most about the ad ecosystem. The pro-ad argument is "they give the little guy a kick at the can", but that's tremendous bullshit. Try an example: Turn off adblock and search "Lejiled Wallet" (a very small French company which makes nice leather wallets). You'll get ads for much bigger companies (Fossil and Belroy) in the sidebar, and those ads will follow you all around the internet for months. https://i.imgur.com/lAaAdGM.png

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#197

Post by martinald »

chrisbaker98 wrote: post #133
jrs235 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even their shipping (with Prime too!) is getting slower and slower. Prime's selling point used to be free 2 day shipping. Shipping is still "free" but many items take 4 days (or more now).

Anecdotal, but I haven't noticed this in the UK. Pretty much everything I order from Amazon still arrives within 24 hours, and I live in the countryside (albeit in the southeast so still not far from London.) OTOH I still notice the problem that other people have mentioned - that practically everything on Amazon these days is the same repackaged Chinese dropshipped garbage. Which is one reason I shop on Amazon far le…

It's just the distances involved. Amazon UK can get everything from any warehouse in the UK to your local depot for last mile delivery overnight, if not faster.

In the US unless you air freight ($$$) it you cannot rely on getting stock from warehouse A (say in NY) to warehouse K (say near LA) overnight. This then means you have to keep a lot more "duplicate" inventory sitting around various places as you cannot just in time move it, which is also extremely expensive.

I imagine the reports of shipping delays in the US are caused by Amazon intentionally trying to reduce the amount of inventory on hand and/or using less air freight.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#198

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

ncallaway wrote: post #146
groestl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you so sure you’re not getting ripped off? If you do not _feel_ you've been ripped off, does it matter?

Yes. I bought a ladle from Amazon. I noticed from some of the comments that a lot of people were getting a knock off ladle. When I arrived, I checked to see if it was legitimate, and… it was not. It was a knock-off. It was fine as a ladle. It ladled things. I never would’ve noticed or complained if I hadn’t seen the rules. No harm, no foul, right? Absolutely not. That day I made a rule that I do not buy anything that…

Well, you don't know that the ladle didn't harm you directly. If it's made of substandard materials that leech carcinogens into your food, the effects might take years to appear.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#199

Post by ryandrake »

moolcool wrote: post #42

It runs deeper than just everything being an ad. It's also completely flooded with rebadged junk from dropshippers. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a new whetstone, and this is what I got when I searched Amazon https://i.imgur.com/1Utp2dF.png The results keep going like that. You see constant repetition of the exact same units with slightly different branding, often with the same stock photography, repeated for pa…

The other thing I noticed is that these thousands of identical products have seemingly randomly generated all-caps brand names like BHHSRE, VHYXZY, XIOU, DAUGHE, JXMOX, LANMU, IBERLS, GMJYC… (yes, these are all actual brands I’ve seen on Amazon). It’s like someone is randomly generating millions of brand/product combinations to deliberately flood Amazon.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#200

Post by UltraViolence »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #49
UltraViolence wrote: post #35

The article speaks of a tipping point and has aided in pulling it forward. Unlimited greed is what eventually sinks a company. We saw it with AltaVista in the '90's (when the search results were all ads) and Google is slowly repeating this opening a space for a competitor to jump into.

> Unlimited greed is what eventually sinks a company. We saw it with AltaVista in the '90's (when the search results were all ads) and Google is slowly repeating this opening a space for a competitor to jump into. I'm not sure this is a helpful characterization. Greed is also what helped the same companies get where they were before they went to shit. The problem is that you can only grow so far in a market before th…

Sure, greed is good. But unlimited greed will eventually drive away customers as Amazon is illustrating very conveniently (and AltaVista before it).

Google too needs to be vigilant that it's decreasing utility isn't driving away users to a competitor.

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