11–20 of 38 posts
https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” Enshittified
> The problem isn’t that it lacks what you want, but that it offers infinite permutations of often unknowable quality. This the problem. The actual worthwhile products being buried in a sea of garbo. Along with the reviews being gamed, it's essentially the online equivalent of a flea market. It just means consumers have to be more careful and do a lot more research before they buy. While this isn't a new thing for an…
https://archive.ph/Kz0Rn “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” Enshittified
> “around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about” And whenever you feel that, hop on AliExpress and find the exact same thing for about a tenth the price.
3D printer parts do often pop up on Amazon 1-2 months after Ali for 5-10% extra. I think many sellers on Aliexpress are aware of the true price people are willing to pay and charge close to that. And then someone does the arbitrage on Amazon close to that.
Now if you want to see a "real" good price, go to Taobao and cough up for the MOQ of 1000, that's 1/10th in my niche.
Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment.
Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Highly specific niche costumes. And a million other things.
I used to think "I really need this exact thing in this exact size but it doesn't exist", and 10 years it never did. These days, I look on Amazon, and -- son of a gun, there are 5 different versions of it all from the past year. You can see that the newest model from last month fixes problems that reviewers of the previous model were complaining about.
No recognizable American brand has bothered to satisfy the market, but 5 different random Chinese "brands" have. And that's an amazing thing.
> Good deals on name brands are harder to come by.
Citation needed. All my Under Armour workout gear, for example, is usually 30-50% cheaper on Amazon that it is on the Under Armour site itself, or from somewhere like Macy's. Apple laptops and iPads are regularly 10-20% cheaper than from Apple. Name brand merchandise sold on Amazon is more consistently cheaper than from anywhere else in my experience. (It is highly dependent on the specific brand though, so I'm talking about in aggregate -- some brands just aren't discounted on Amazon or anywhere else at all.)
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Hig…
Amazon used to be a department store, now its a bazaar + department store. You can still find the old trusted brand stuff if you want, but now you can also get a much larger diversity of products.
People in the department store model just assume that any weirdly named brand they haven't heard of is just automatically a shitty product but that hasn't been true for a long time. Actually pretty often the well known brand is selling the same thing at a 2x markup.
The department stores have their own websites if you prefer that curated experience though.
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Hig…
And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!
What a world! :)
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Hig…
And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!
> Now around every corner lies a brand you’ve never heard of, selling a product you’re not sure about. Which is actually great! I'm not even joking. There has been an explosion of helpful products that simply didn't exist before, because these Chinese manufacturers are so willing to experiment. Consumer-friendly shelves of every type and dimension. Massage balls/tools of a wide variety of textures and hardnesses. Hig…
And on top of all that they're all hazardous and made poorly and pay people to lie to you about them being hazardous and made poorly. This is great!
And if the product is bad, people leave negative reviews, and it's easy to filter for those. Just like you should with any product you're considering purchasing.
Now granted I'm not buying hoverboards or anything that actually has serious potential for injury/fire. But for everyday things, it generally seems quite fine. And it's certainly not like name-brand stuff is magically free of defects or quality issues.