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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

#141

Post by HillaryBriss »

mrosett wrote: post #47

A few thoughts: * Amazon is a total mess right now, and this is great investigative reporting. I think Amazon is going to go through a rough year or two in PR terms. They need to get this under control quickly. * Amazon can pretend that it's just a platform, but in practice they benefit from consumers assuming that everything on the site has some stamp of approval (even if it's not as full a stamp as, say, buying the…

> in practice they benefit from consumers assuming that everything on the site has some stamp of approval

as you point out, it's kind of surprising that Amazon seems to have entirely abandoned this "stamp of approval" concept. i thought "stamp of approval" was one of the few differentiators that retailers could use to compete effectively.

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

#142

Post by okmokmz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #29
ravenstine wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And eBay is often way cheaper to boot.

I have not found this to be the case for almost anything I have bought. It is almost always more expensive on eBay now.

Amazon used to regularly be one of the least expensive retailers I can find. Now I rarely find anything that is cheaper on amazon than elsewhere

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

#143

Post by lotsofpulp »

einpoklum wrote: post #131
burlesona wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple Pay is nothing at all like Amazon. Apple Pay is simply a convenient, secure way of paying without giving out your credit card number, and reduces risk of fraudulent transactions and chargebacks for merchants, who also don’t need to worry about storing credit cards and having them stolen. It’s a win win situation.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

Darmody wrote: post #13

Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years. I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that changed a lot. There are specific things that I still buy from Amazon but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. Thankfully there are…

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by larntz »

Darmody wrote: post #13

Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years. I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that changed a lot. There are specific things that I still buy from Amazon but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days. Thankfully there are…

Exactly. For a while Amazon was the first place I'd look to shop online. They had legit stuff and it was super convenient. The last year, maybe two, it's become such an unpleasant experience that Amazon has become a last resort.

Free fast shipping is awesome, but I'll be patient or pay more to avoid Amazon these days. I don't trust the products, and I'm done wasting time returning things.

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

#146

Post by stillworks »

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #73

I don’t get it. I had about 150 purchases last year. Toothbrushes, Apple Watch bands, hard drives, diapers, truffles, pasta, foot massagers, hats, books, etc. I had 1 bad purchase. I bought a used Roomba 980 sold by Amazon. There was a used 680 in the box. Amazon apologized and sent a brand new 980 the next day. Am I some sort of uberresultsfilter, or do the whiners just get way too much attention?

I am curious about this too. In US and Canada has Amazon completely stopped selling things and only acting as a platform for third party sellers ?

Instinctively, most people are probably looking for the best i.e. lowest price which is fair enough.

I was looking for something on Amazon yesterday and the item was not sold by Amazon, was not FBA (had free delivery though)

However on the right hand side, there was a list of sellers and Amazon.co.uk was the second in the list with a price just £0.01 higher than the cheapest seller.

I have found that most of the times, Amazon as a seller, comes second or third in the list but even then the price difference is not significant compared to non Amazon sellers.

I end up buying the higher priced (but not by much) item due to the customer friendly returns and one year "warranty".

I think one just needs to pay attention to that list appearing on the right hand side and decide if Amazon itself is selling the item at a reasonable price premium or not.

If not then, shop around by all means.

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

#147

Post by lotsofpulp »

sjg007 wrote: post #132

I’ve said this before but this will be Amazon’s downfall. Target and Walmart have much better product quality control.

I opt for Target simply because Walmart has resellers too and I don’t feel like wasting my time and effort filtering those out.

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

#148

Post by nickjj »

There's a 0% chance I would ever buy food or any type of consumable from Amazon. There's way too many people selling counterfeit items and there's no reasonable way to tell until you end up either dead or sick.

My friend's cat came inches from dying because of flea treatment purchased there not too long ago. When it was purchased it had 4+ star reviews and generally seemed good. But if you look at the ratings today (months later), the average ratings went way down and there's just an endless amount of reviews saying the stuff is poison. Some people even lost their cat.

The messed up thing is it's the same exact brand and box you would see on the shelf at a store so there's no way to tell just by looking at the product. At least not from a laymen's POV (I looked at both boxes and didn't see any glaring differences).

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

#149

Post by WaltPurvis »

AlexandrB wrote: post #64

Their shipping practices have also degraded. Amazon usually ships anything they can in bubble-padded envelopes. This is ok for many things, but for books it's a disaster - softcovers almost always end up with damaged covers, hardcovers get dented corners from being dropped without any protection. I've also received movies and video games with cases damaged worse than what you'd see in a second-hand store. The (suprem…

I know! It's so stupid. I try not to order books directly from Amazon anymore unless I buy two or more at the same time (because if you buy 2+ books they ship in a box rather than a padded envelope). I'm not shy about returning books with bent covers or other damage, I do it all the time, and a couple of times I've returned the same book twice until they finally managed to deliver an undamaged copy, but it's a little worrisome because I've heard tales of Amazon banning customers who "abuse" returns. (And of course it's also a hassle).

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

#150

Post by HillaryBriss »

martythemaniak wrote: post #30

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,…

i recently searched for a rubber replacement washer for a very common water faucet. nothing exotic.

the only washer collection i could find that was certain to have the desired washer size would have cost $32. again, this is a very common type of water valve. taking a trip to a big box retailer looks pretty attractive in that context.

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