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Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

theatlantic.com

11–20 of 222 posts

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#11
As part of the customer category that spends tens of thousands on Amazon per year, having shifted the majority of my non niche spending for physical goods to the platform, I've found their error rate to be well under 1%. I also return However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort efficiently has definitely declined dramatically. It takes a lot more effort to make sure you're buying what you wanted for certain categories, particularly soft ones. I can no longer trust that the best selection is going to be on the first page of results.

I wonder if Amazon will draw the line somewhere on how wide, how encompassing of a platform it is for third party vendors. It seems to have pushed itself over a limit.

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#12
I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable.

I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downside of course, is that it will take 2-3 weeks to get here, but at least I know what I'm getting.

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#13

As part of the customer category that spends tens of thousands on Amazon per year, having shifted the majority of my non niche spending for physical goods to the platform, I've found their error rate to be well under 1%. I also return However, that confusion within categories has increased is undeniable. Try to buy a bath towel and be flooded with similar items with similar reviews. The ability to search and sort eff…

Amazon's solution to this is to create its own house brands and then promote those. I've had good luck with their brands. The quality and price are good.

Bath towel is a good example. I'll only buy softlines like that on Amazon if they have their own brand. When I go search on Amazon and get the piles of random stuff, I just don't buy anything. It's not worth the trouble to sort through it all.

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#15
post #12

I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downsi…

This is one of the products which I have ordered frequently and with which I didn't expect any problems. Almost all the reviews are good, the price is good and I've been subscribing and saving for years.

So I'm genuinely curious why you thought Amazon wasn't good for this item.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#16
post #7

They may have ruined online shopping but they haven’t solved it either. The clothing retailers (an area hard for amazon to move in on) will remain competitive. I think the one area amazon absolutely has done right is customer service. If any other company made their customer service as good, easy, and simple, I think they would be able to catch up quickly as well. For example: I recently bought a jacket on sale from…

I find it interesting that we think of Amazon as having gotten "customer service" right. I've had two classes of experience with Amazon: Products they act as a seller for, and products they act as a producer for. When I'm buying item X and it's not up to par, Amazon's response is invariably "just send it on back and we'll refund you." At one point I complained I'm not taking a half-day off work to get this $5 item in…

I can see that 3 hour call being real - I’ve had similar experiences with amazon customer service that I could foresee becoming a long call, such as canceling Prime: they certainly made me wait about 15-20 minutes while trying to “procure permission” and it ended up being some kind of verbal guarantee that another depr would email me the confirmation. After a few hours I did get the confirmation and refund. The entire call did take about 45 minutes: quite a frustratingly long time.

Navigating amazon customer service itself has become a learning experience. Typically the fastest way when getting an annoying customer service agent who “just doesn’t get it” is to request a transfer to amazon USA customer service. You can also request speaking to a supervisot and continue escalating. Sometimes calls end up being 30-45 minutes regardless of method, since they do not always make transferring to amazon USA easy (and then once you get to amazon USA you play the same game over again).

It’s certainly nowhere as good as my original post made it sound, but it’s still better than most online shops.

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#17
post #15
post #12

I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downsi…

This is one of the products which I have ordered frequently and with which I didn't expect any problems. Almost all the reviews are good, the price is good and I've been subscribing and saving for years. So I'm genuinely curious why you thought Amazon wasn't good for this item. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE

Three of the eight reviews on that page call out quality issues....

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#18
post #12

I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downsi…

There are certain swaths of items that you literally can't buy anymore because they are completely overrun with counterfeiters. Perfume/cologne and board games are two big ones.

Amazon is, at this point, undoubtedly one of the largest enablers of open counterfeiting in the world. It needs to be met with a massive investigation and crippling fines. That probably won't happen until we have a federal government that is no longer slavish prostituted to business interests, unfortunately.

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#19

They may have ruined online shopping but they haven’t solved it either. The clothing retailers (an area hard for amazon to move in on) will remain competitive. I think the one area amazon absolutely has done right is customer service. If any other company made their customer service as good, easy, and simple, I think they would be able to catch up quickly as well. For example: I recently bought a jacket on sale from…

We need a breakthrough in package delivery. Over half of people’s online shopping complaints are due to items not arriving on time, being delivered to the wrong address, being stolen...

Re: Amazon Ruined Online Shopping

#20
post #15
post #12

I recently went down the rabbit hole of trying to buy Yorkshire Gold tea on Amazon (I am in the US). I encountered so many bad reviews of users complaining about the quality, and the flavor being weakened, or not the authentic YG flavor, that I gave up. It was impossible to tell to which seller each bad review was attributable. I went on Ebay, found decent UK sellers in less than 5 minutes, and ordered my tea. Downsi…

This is one of the products which I have ordered frequently and with which I didn't expect any problems. Almost all the reviews are good, the price is good and I've been subscribing and saving for years. So I'm genuinely curious why you thought Amazon wasn't good for this item. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XEV9YE

Congratulations, you got lucky and were directed to a non-counterfeit seller. But your anecdote is obviously not representative of everyone's experience.
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