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The Amazon tax

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Re: The Amazon tax

#521

Post by nonfamous »

I moved from the US to Australia recently, and Amazon isn’t really a thing here. Yes, it exists, and it is heavily marketed, but the range available in the store is at a guess less than 1% of what’s available in the US store. I occasionally go to amazon.com.au to look for things, have the same issue having to wade through irrelevant slop in the search results, find nothing suitable, and leave.

And then I do what it seems most Australians still do — go to a mall, or visit a specialty retailer, or use a specialty retailer’s clunky website and find exactly the thing I need and order it there and get it a few days later.

It’s quite refreshing to go out on the shopping streets or to the malls, and see many people out and about shopping. Likewise, the staff in stores are well-informed and helpful, and make the shopping experience pleasant and efficient.

Amazon is why we can’t have nice shopping experiences in the US.

Re: The Amazon tax

#522

Post by mdavidn »

delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

In the past year, I ended my Amazon Prime membership and started shopping at Target again for this reason. A few items I do still purchase on Amazon, and that has been eye-opening: Checkout is now a minefield of dark patterns, filled with buttons that would reactivate my Prime membership in one click. Is their goal to drive me away from the service?

Re: The Amazon tax

#523

Post by Jblx2 »

citizenpaul wrote: post #413
delegate wrote: post #224

This has been true for years on Amazon and is true for most big services now. Over time the concept of search has mutated from 'locate the exact item I'm looking for' to 'show me a list of semantic search results'. Somehow nobody noticed. Oh and of course those are not random results - you can literally feel how the platform is trying to nudge you into buying what IT wants, not what you wanted. The search is just pur…

To me its a bigger problem. The concept of Brand was highly diminished during the manufacturing outsource phase to cheap countries. You could pay $10 for the brand name of a simple product or get the 100% equivalent for $1 from a Chinese Knock off. So people felt ripped off and abandoned brands. (reasonable since the brands were keeping prices high artificially) However that has lead to a massive drop off in quality…

How do you even know something is authentic on Amazon, and not a counterfeit? What with the return scams and whatnot. That's why I avoid Amazon for most things are aren't close to disposable. I feel like there could a niche for a site that only sells as authorized distributor. To cut down on things like counterfeit and made-with-toxic materials items, etc. So no fly-by-night "marketplace" sellers. But what do I know.

Re: The Amazon tax

#524

Post by FinnKuhn »

If you are living in Germany I can not recommend https://geizhals.de/ enough. It is "just" a price comparision website, but it features most relevant online stores for me, annd more importantly their filters are just amazing and allow you to find products extremly efficient.

Re: The Amazon tax

#525

Post by ssl-3 »

vostrocity wrote: post #497
alex43578 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess for things like clothes or generic homegoods, I've seen this deluge of random China goods. But shopping for other things, like electronics, it does a really good job of surfacing what I'm actually looking for, whether that be name brand or generic. If I'm buying a curtain rod, the MUDLRHK brand is effectively indistinguishable from a "name brand" or house brand. They're basically all coming from the same fact…

Surprisingly, their "Alexa for Shopping" feature has been quite good for finding products that contain a specific set of desired features. I was looking for a device that plugs into my car's 12V cigarette lighter outlet, connects with my phone's Bluetooth, outputs the audio to 3.5mm aux (my car has aux input but no Bluetooth), has no battery, automatically turns on with my car, has next and previous track buttons, an…

Their LLM tells me that it can't perform searches and can't read reviews, and then does both things anyway. It consistently takes me at least 4 interactions before it begins to produce useful results.

It may be better than the uselessness of the Amazon search box, but that's a very low bar.

Re: The Amazon tax

#526

Post by BoiledCabbage »

toddmorey wrote: post #441
stillpointlab wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dark pattern I've noticed a few times is the exact match I type into Amazon search doesn't even return the item I entered but 2 or 3 entire pages of alternatives. I know the item is there because Google returns it, either as a search response or in their "shopping" widget. I can click through Google to Amazon and see the item, sometimes even from the certified seller. But if I enter the exact search term in Amazo…

Yes, this is a horrible practice. Not just Amazon… most major e-commerce platforms set up fake pages for products they don’t offer to try to get you to the products they actually do. Google needs to ban this practice because it makes their results garbage.

Is that the "Amazon Tax"? I thought the Amazon tax was their goofiness practice of taking a very large % of all sales in their site, and banning companies from selling their same goods for less on any competitor site.

Meaning if Amazon takes 30% of the sale and Walmart online can only take 15% with those savings being passed on to the customer, the company is not allowed for that lower price to be on Walmart.

Re: The Amazon tax

#527

Post by [deleted] »

abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

[deleted]

Re: The Amazon tax

#528

Post by righthand »

abixb wrote: post #29

I've slowly shifted all my consumer purchases from Amazon to local shops and other online platforms, including Etsy. I'm now seriously contemplating deleting my Amazon account of 15 years in one whole swoop. The quality degradation is painfully apparent, and the value add of Amazon in my life has been steadily declining for a while. I've also had terrible experiences with AWS, but that's a different story. Amazon's o…

I havent bought anything on Amazon for 10 years. Sure the local prices are infrequently higher but with 20%+ inflation over the last half decade comparison shopping is pretty much dead. Glad to support my local places or find an alternative or just live without whatever.

Re: The Amazon tax

#529

Post by bombcar »

ndiddy wrote: post #242
amluto wrote: post #208

> The highest-yielding ad my publisher has tested so far is the search “Seth Godin The Knot“ I think it would be interesting to see legal action here. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there should be at least three ways to go after this: 1. Trademark infringement. If Amazon is using someone’s search that is clearly searching for a specific product, possibly trademarked, it seems inappropriate for them to serve up an…

It reminds me of an analogy I read a while ago in an article critiquing keyword based online advertising (can't find the article unfortunately). A restaurant wants to drum up new business, so the owner tasks three employees with handing out flyers with coupons attached. The coupons are marked to identify which employee passed them out, and each week the owner gives a bonus to the employee whose coupons get redeemed t…

It’s worse than that. If that employee isn’t standing in the waiting room, handing out coupons some other restaurant’s employee will be standing in the waiting room, handing out coupon for the restaurant next-door.

Oh, and you have to pay the building owner for the coupons which also discount your food.

Re: The Amazon tax

#530

Post by ryukoposting »

xyzelement wrote: post #512

I don't love (but use...) Amazon but I think if done properly, ads can be relevant even when searching for a specific thing. Let's use a Google Example: I search for Toyota RAV4 and get an ad for Mazda cx-50. Obviously Toyota hates that but as a consumer it has a chance of making me aware of something I didn't know but would want to know, especially as a part of a purchase decision. That's why Mazda pays for that ad…

No. If I search "Toyota RAV4" what I mean is Toyota RAV4. If I meant Mazda CX-50 I would have typed "Mazda CX-50." If I wanted information about various mid-size SUVs, rather than one in particular, I'd have searched "midsize SUVs."

The number of times I have searched something, got back something I did not ask for, and found that helpful, rounds down to zero. It's actively destructive to the platforms that allow this kind of hijacking of search terms.

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