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Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

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Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a small niche retailer that makes and sells guitar straps in Nashville I couldn’t agree more. Our experiments selling on Amazon have only hurt us, but Prime is a huge time & shipping $$ saver for re-ordering supplies for our shop and even materials used to make our products. We’ve experimented with selling on a lot of different sites (Amazon, Etsy, Reverb, etc) and have found the best way to control the brand and…

Very nice website and you offer Apple Pay. I’d totally buy direct from you over going to Amazon. I think you’re on the right track.

Subjugating economic activity to Amazon in part and Apple in another part isn't the right track, socially and IMHO.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#133
post #46

That and they've gone the wall-mart route of actually PUSHING anything / the lowest price possible. I get stuff that's like 5% cheaper but quality looks to be about 50% the quality pushed on me all the time on Amazon now. I went to Amazon originally to find QUALITY products that my local stores didn't carry because of price pressures. Now Amazon seems to be switching to just being ... wall-mart and that's already nea…

Kind of off topic, but do you have a recommendation on a good HDMI switch? I have struggled with the crappy ones from amazon many times. The most frustrating part is that their "remotes" all seem to overlap with regular tv remote frequencies or something, such that changing the volume on the tv ends up triggering an input switch.

I buy my electronics from B&H, and the Kanex ones are decent.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#134
post #46

That and they've gone the wall-mart route of actually PUSHING anything / the lowest price possible. I get stuff that's like 5% cheaper but quality looks to be about 50% the quality pushed on me all the time on Amazon now. I went to Amazon originally to find QUALITY products that my local stores didn't carry because of price pressures. Now Amazon seems to be switching to just being ... wall-mart and that's already nea…

Kind of off topic, but do you have a recommendation on a good HDMI switch? I have struggled with the crappy ones from amazon many times. The most frustrating part is that their "remotes" all seem to overlap with regular tv remote frequencies or something, such that changing the volume on the tv ends up triggering an input switch.

No explicit recommendations, but I generally go to monoprice.com for this type of thing nowadays. I've been very happy with their quality.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#135

I wonder if Amazon won't somehow kill itself with poor quality. I needed a bunch of LED bulbs recently and I knew exactly what I was looking for - about a dozen 40W eq, two 60w eq and two 100w eq, all in 2700K and two 100w in 3000K. Amazon was a mess - prices were all over the place, exact products were hard to find, etc. Dollarama had them all for $2.50, $3.50 and $4.00 a piece, usually in all three flavours (2700,…

> and I knew exactly what I was looking for - about a dozen 40W eq, two 60w eq and two 100w eq, all in 2700K and two 100w in 3000K.

If you browse the "LED Bulbs" section you can filter by lumen, color temperature, socket size etc. That's more accurate than the marketing labels ( "W equivalent", "warm") in the product titles.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#136

Been saying for a long time Amazon is a flee market. Many times it's my last choice now when shopping online.

>Many times it's my last choice now when shopping online.

Same here. It's pretty incredible that Amazon was once one of my favorite, and relatively well trusted, retailers. I now feel it's one of the worst major online retailers, and try to use them as little as possible

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#137
post #46

That and they've gone the wall-mart route of actually PUSHING anything / the lowest price possible. I get stuff that's like 5% cheaper but quality looks to be about 50% the quality pushed on me all the time on Amazon now. I went to Amazon originally to find QUALITY products that my local stores didn't carry because of price pressures. Now Amazon seems to be switching to just being ... wall-mart and that's already nea…

Kind of off topic, but do you have a recommendation on a good HDMI switch? I have struggled with the crappy ones from amazon many times. The most frustrating part is that their "remotes" all seem to overlap with regular tv remote frequencies or something, such that changing the volume on the tv ends up triggering an input switch.

If you have an amp then upgrading to a multi hdmi amp/hifi might be a better way to go. I found the hdmi switches always crap out or have the remote issue you mention.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#138

We used to buy from Amazon since it was a stamp of quality. I tried buying a usb-c cable for my mac mini, and it was terrible. So many brands and no way of knowing what to get. Today you might as well buy from Ebay. What online store exists today, where I can be guaranteed to buy quality things? Do they no longer exist?

This is the same issue I've had with walmart. For a long time now it's been obvious they have brands make "special versions" of many products for walmart which are lower quality and cheaper. Now they are offering free one and 2 day delivery on their site, but I just don't want to go there for fear that I'll end up getting what looks like a "good deal" but what I'll actually get is a worse more cheaply made product. A…

I never thought I'd say this, but I trust Walmart more than Amazon at this point

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wondered how we got all these reports of lead in products and children's toys. There was a post a few weeks back where someone explained it and it made perfect sense: recycling. China takes a ton of US recycling. They often melt down metals, e-waste and solder and it's difficult to separated out lead and unleaded source material. A lot of it just gets put together and used in bulk.

They have these issues due to corruption, greed and negligence. With recycling as with other stuff, China cheats and poisons people to make a quick dollar, decades go by and nothing changes and nobody goes to prison. Think of how many people use Chinese made pots and pans, or knives, and have no clue they’re poisoning themselves and their families just to save a few bucks by buying the cheap Chinese version.

To be fair, when someone is caught doing this in China, they are executed. In the US, their fancy lawyers get them off with a slap on the wrist.

Re: Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers

#140
post #19
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The odd thing is eBay's quality is now easier to assess than Amazon's.

How do you assess quality on eBay, e.g. for cables?

The feedback and reviews on eBay are far more useful and trustworthy than those on Amazon. I find that the bundling of unlike products together, and other tactics Amazon uses, makes their reviews essentially useless and definitely not an accurate way to assess product quality
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