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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

#261

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

justapassenger wrote: post #221
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will their return policy rebuild your house when a faulty power adapter burns it down?

And that’s relevant how? I don’t buy unknown Chinese brands for stuff like that. And that’s getting harder. But that’s a separate issue.

"Stuff like that" being what, anything mains-powered, anything with a lithium-ion battery, anything that touches your skin, anything that might get very hot as part of its operation, anything whose continued functionality manages the safe temperature or pressure of anything else, anything that connects to the Internet, anything that stores data, anything that touches food, anything you might ingest or inhale, anything load-bearing, anything that is costly or difficult to remove once installed, any components that fail in a way that damage other components in the same device, anything whose failure would block an ongoing project, anything that seals containers or conduits for liquids or gases, et cetera, et cetera? It turns out that the category of products who can fail in a way that wouldn't be covered by a full refund is actually "most products".

EDIT: Also collectables and randomised products such as trading cards.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#262

Post by candiddevmike »

sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

I applaud anyone who leaves a non 5 star review, gets contacted by the company with bribes to make it 5 stars, and updates their review to report the company doing that.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#263

Post by GekkePrutser »

martinald wrote: post #197
chrisbaker98 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is also happening in Europe now on an EU scale. Often something takes a couple days because it goes from Germany to Spain or something. They don't say that's the reason but you can tell from the stickers on the products. I guess they don't do this anymore for the UK though because of all the customs hassles since Brexit.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#264

Post by charcircuit »

SoftAnnaLee wrote: post #227

> Here’s a modest proposal: No more than half of any screen we see at any given time — be it on desktop web or a smartphone — should contain ads. I have to say, we have gotten extremely complacent if “half” your page being filled with ads is considered acceptable. I can understand the unfortunate reality that online services need ads to survive, but surely half of a screen is still far from acceptable.

What's wrong with full screen ads? I honestly don't mind tiktok and reels ads at all despite them taking a full screen.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#265

Post by NikolaNovak »

kennend3 wrote: post #185
iso1631 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never managed to connect with America tales of the length of shipping. Almost (99%) everything I order from amazon arrives when it says, most of which is next day. I live in the country, but like most UK citizens fairly close to a major trunk road (10 miles or so). Of course I'm sure things are different if you live on Mull or Fair Isle, but for the vast majority of us it seems reliable The quality of what you g…

I think what many people outside North America fail to grasp is the size of north America. To give you an idea: I live just outside Toronto (Ontario, Canada) and if i want to drive east to the next province (Quebec) it will take me 4 hours to cover the 450 KM. If i want to go to the next province to the west (Manitoba) It will take me 20 hours to cover the 2,000 KM. So to cut across Ontario you are looking at somethi…

HaH, exactly.

25 years ago, I lived in a city of Rijeka. You could start from Croatia; enter & drive through entire country of Slovenia; enter into Italy and go shopping into Trieste, two countries over - in 75km.

Now I'm in the Greater Toronto Area, and my best friend lives about the same distance, officially in the same city or metro.

There's just over two thousand kilometers between the capitals of two neighbouring provinces in Canada (Winnipeg & Toronto). Or you could go through dozen countries, with all of their states and provinces in Europe for same distance (e.g. Geneva to Istanbul or similar).

Distances are vastly different and people's attitude toward them as well - what is daily commute in GTA used to be a yearly vacation pilgrimage in my childhood :)

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#266

Post by macintux »

id wrote: post #160
Mistletoe wrote: post #34

It’s refreshing to see this in the Washington Post, owned by Bezos. Tiny beacon of hope going out into the darkness. Search ads on shopping websites are just capitalism taken to the natural end. Hopefully degradation of user experience will curb it somewhat. Our only other option is some sort of new Internet Bill of Rights being passed and I’m not optimistic lobbyists would ever allow it. We need some sort of fund fo…

We don't see what they are not reporting.

Thankfully there are many other news organizations who aren’t owned by Bezos.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#267

Post by otikik »

Animats wrote: post #236
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…

> Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame. On Alibaba, you get business background info, whether it's a manufacturer or a reseller, a picture of the factory, info about whether someone checked out the factory, what certifications the product has, and how long it takes them to respond to inquiries. Amazon doesn't have any of that. On Alibaba, search for "outlet strip". You can check "Ver…

Unless there’s some kind of third-party checking process, that only means that their seller forms have those extra fields.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#268

Post by GekkePrutser »

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

Here in Spain it definitely isn't.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#269

Post by mannschott »

I was shocked by how spammy Amazon.com's search results seemed compared to what I'm accustomed to from Amazon.de. I'm not a regular user of Amazon.com but have had occasion to do so since I'm visiting family in the US. Amazon.de is the "local" Amazon where I live.

Is this an affect of differing laws in the EU versus the USA? Differences in leadership of Amazon.com versus Amazon.de? Differences in perceived market expectations? Perhaps the average American consumer is expected to be more tolerant of this kind of thing? (I wonder because I compare the robo-call-infested hellscape that we've made of our telephone system compared to the rarity of such abuse where I live in Europe and wonder if we, in the US, are just more prone to behave in a way that produces tragedies of the commons.)

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#270

Post by vidarh »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #263
martinald wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is also happening in Europe now on an EU scale. Often something takes a couple days because it goes from Germany to Spain or something. They don't say that's the reason but you can tell from the stickers on the products. I guess they don't do this anymore for the UK though because of all the customs hassles since Brexit.

I've not noticed a major difference in the UK from before Brexit. Some products would come from elsewhere in Europe but most would be local then too. London alone has several Amazon depots, so lots of things are same day delivery here.

Maybe it's down to competition - for lots of products I'd go elsewhere if they didn't offer at least next day delivery.

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