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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

washingtonpost.com

271–280 of 510 posts

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#271
As shown by this and countless of other articles, including comments here and places like Reddit; Amazon has gotten to Day 2 years ago on Jeff’s watch

Just to ensure that you don’t buy a fake product, it’s now normal to check if there are any 3rd parties using Amazon warehouses in the Other Sellers section

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#272
Is it just me or does it feel like the major tech companies have completely lost the war against bots/spam? Search results are regressing across multiple online services[1] - Google, Amazon, and app stores are all filled with junk and scams. Reviews for products are generally filled to the brim with bots or paid reviews.

[1] I've noticed the re-emergence of Experts Exchange style sites on Google recently. For technical questions Stack Overflow or official docs are often near the bottom of the first page, while sites like w3schools or geeksforgeeks are at the top with much less useful content.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#274

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 do similar but actually prefer the product with the lower amount of reviews as IMO a product with 200 reviews is more likely to have real reviews than one with 20k reviews, they just look fake to me.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#275

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.

I'm sure people do it, the bribes are probably not very good. Sadly the company can probably get Amazon to take down the review in that case.

Reviews for sellers themselves are a joke too, I was looking at some earlier today, via black friday deals. The number of reviews with a line through them and "Amazon takes responsibility for this fulfillment-related experience" was hilarious, when those reviews were things like "the motor doesn't work". I guess those then aren't included in the "90% positive" statistic.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#276

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…

[deleted]

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#277

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…

Amazon's business model has shifted from selling goods to consumers to selling consumers to anonymous Chinese manufacturers.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#278
I think most comments here are America centric where Amazon might've peaked. Even without Prime, Amazon has been the best e-commerce site I've used in Europe or India. The customer support itself warrants the price they ask for and it's usually the cheapest in the market. It is possible that it will head the same direction with market saturation but for now the promise still lives up.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It may already exist, but I want to create a simple regex-based browser plugin that suppresses Amazon search results if the product name or seller contains 4-7 consecutive capitalized letters. Call it LESSAMZNSPAM or something.

It exists already, as a uBlockOrigin rules generator: https://letsblock.it/filters/amazon-products

You just need to write the regexp.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#280

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…

The difference between the US and the UK is size and the sheer remoteness of some places, even small cities. Unless you've been there, it's hard to grasp. I've driven around large parts of the western US and there's a LOT of empty space. I don't know how many shipping centers Amazon has in the UK, but I am about 99.999% sure that there's areas of the US larger than all of the British Isle that are served by a single…

There's a high degree of bias in who we hear from too, I think. Most European countries have a grand total of zero Amazon depots, so there are plenty of European countries where the delivery is not fast either, but I rarely see people from those countries talking about it for whatever reason. I'm guessing in large part because those countries also does not have a local Amazon site, so it feels less surprising because if you order from Amazon you're unambiguously ordering from abroad, with different expectations.
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