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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#211

Post by thewebcount »

treis wrote: post #127
verdverm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh, just used Newegg this week... 2 day shipping costs more, they didn't even get it here in 2 days, they split my order into 8 orders, each tracked and emailed separately. I've been boycotting Amazon almost 5 years, but their competition really sucks to the point I'm thinking of going back. At least I've been able to avoid a lot of frivolous purchases for a while...

NewEgg rather infamously scammed Linus Tech tips and thousands of stories of them doing similar came out (myself included). I don't know why anyone buys from them. They will commit outright fraud and steal money from you. Amazon at least maintains the fig leaf of plausible deniability and part of that is no questions asked returns.

Likewise. I ordered 2 sets of batteries for our cordless landline phone from NewEgg. They sent me one set. I emailed customer service and they charged me for 2 more sets and sent nothing. Never doing business with them again.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#212

Post by Cloudef »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #194
Cloudef wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Some more examples, I recently needed new hair dryer as my old one started throwing spars This "SALONIA" hair dryer is being pushed by paid influencers in japan, however based on the few critical reviews and their pictures, it does not look like the quality is good https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/SALONIA-Speedy-Negative-Lightw...

Then there is this shady one with multiple amazon listings, similarly bait and switch, reviews are odd https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJPWNZQQ https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJDVZLYC https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BBB77M9C https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/B0BJQ8MBMB

The products may actually be somewhat decent, but based on the tactics involved and the shady reviews, I wouldn't put my money on something that can shock you or burn your house down, so I eventually just went with reputable panasonic one.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#213

Post by morsch »

moolcool wrote: post #74
simonsarris wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highly recommend Shapton stones and buying them from Lee Valley https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/tools/shapton-sharpening-sto...

I had a look at those, but I ended up going with the KDS 1000/6000. I'm still new to using it, but it works great!

For the record, so does the "KUNQUN" (ie. gibberish) brand whetstone I bought on Amazon a few years ago.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#215

Post by takoid »

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.

Does this only happen with an active Prime membership? I tested a few search queries and didn’t see the inconsistencies you’re describing.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#216

Post by danaris »

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…

There's been a shift in our culture over the past century or so (though mainly, I think, since the 1980s) in how we look at the purpose of a company.

It used to be that a fairly normal, mainstream company's purpose and goals were along the lines of "We make a product or provide a service, and doing that well enough/better than our competition makes us decent money."

Nowadays, it seems to be almost expected that the way a company operates is closer to "We are here to make as much money as we possibly can. If that means we have to make a product or provide a service, OK, but that's a necessary evil to the process of making absolutely ungodly amounts of money."

Google didn't get where it was before it went to shit because of greed. They got there because of genuine technical prowess, and a willingness to sacrifice possible revenue to provide an improved experience, with things like the bare-bones main Google page (as compared to things like Yahoo!, Altavista, and Infoseek when Google first appeared, which were laden down with all kinds of crap).

When greed took over, they shifted from the former mindset to the latter, and that's when things really started to go downhill.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#217

Post by manicennui »

jrs235 wrote: post #95
kennend3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame. This. Once i realized what was taking place on amazon I simply moved to AliExpress. I mean if i am going to get something from there anyhow i might as well save the middleman fees and take the hit on shipping. I canceled my prime membership a while ago as well. I don't see how amazon can continue to simply be a front end for AliExpress for long…

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).

This is heavily dependent on location. I receive almost everything in two days or less. It is extremely common to get things the next day or even the same day. I'm in the Chicago suburbs.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#218

Post by antisthenes »

savanaly wrote: post #13
aslilac wrote: post #2

Amazon is unusable at this point, and I don’t get how they have so many customers. Free and fast shipping is no longer exclusive to them, and there are others out there with far nicer websites and no shitty ad listings.

I only need to buy something online every couple months, maybe once a month at most. I hate shopping so I'll be damned if I will spend 1 more second thinking about the process than I have to. Amazon always has the thing, ships it in 2 days, I can be relatively sure I'm not getting ripped off by more than +/- 25% and that's good enough for me. I've never had any issues with fakes that HN complains about all the time.…

For me it's the fact that they have literally _everything_ on their store.

I'm not going to go out and make 3 different accounts on sites that aren't Amazon, when I could save time and buy anything ranging from auto parts to PC parts to groceries on the same website.

Yes, a lot of it is rebadged Ali junk, but guess what, sometimes that junk actually does the work it's supposed to. If I'm buying a plastic towel hook for the bathroom, I really don't care where it comes from or if it's 50c cheaper on another website.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#219

Post by thewebcount »

imglorp wrote: post #19
xadhominemx wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your preferred alternatives?

Yes. The alternative is track down the original, individual vendor and deal with their custom sign up, shopping cart, shipping, and support on their site. Repeat with each different vendor for next purchase. As much as Amazon hates its customers and vendors, it's got a consistent experience.

While actually doing the signup is a pain, I just use a “hide-my-email” address and cut it off after I receive the item. And I’d personally prefer to enter my credit card info every time. I once accidentally clicked on the “Yes, sign me up for Amazon Prime today, even though I’ve turned it down literally hundreds of times,” button and they immediately charged my credit card without even an “Are you sure?” Alert. Luckily I was able to cancel and get it refunded relatively easily (after 5 screens of “are you sure?” And “do you want to just pause it for a few months?”).

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#220

Post by rescbr »

losteric wrote: post #125
dspillett wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used to be able to filter for just things sold by Amazon, but that vanished some time ago. Not that a “fulfilled by amazon” filter would do much these days because of how much of other sellers stock there is commingled in their warehouses. Same for the “prime” filter that is present if you subscribe to that, it filters out a lot of junk but far from all of it.

Filter by seller is still available

It's usually hidden, so much that I've captured the query string parameter that represents its filter for my country's Amazon.

Fortunately there are few marketplace sellers, so it doesn't annoy me so much compared to Amazon US.

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