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Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

theguardian.com

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Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#281

Post by blincoln »

wiether wrote: post #24
ggm wrote: post #9

Amazon kindle books search is designed to show you authors other than the name you search on, to increase sales of "in the style of" which could have been a tickbox item, but no: they know it irritates, but it makes them more money. If type "Charles dickens" in search, there should be a way to get works by Dickens exclusively. Even if you select the Web link author name, you get "in the style of"

> If type "Charles dickens" in search, there should be a way to get works by Dickens exclusively. I tried it: - on the website from the home page - in the Kindle category - on my Kindle directly All I got was books by Dickens. There was the usual "sponsored" items but they are explicitly displayed as it. I don't know if it's a country issue, but I don't have the same experience as you. Furthermore, I read regularly o…

In my experience, the Amazon search feature is very unpredictable and confusing.

E.g. if I search for " blu ray" (no quotes), I will usually get only listings for foreign imports of the title sold by third parties, even when Amazon carries the item. If I want to get the US release in my search results, I have to leave out the "blu ray" string, which makes the search results less useful if Amazon carries a lot of non-BD versions of the title and I am looking for it specifically in that format.

Some items will be hidden when searching from Amazon itself, but can be ordered by doing the same search on DuckDuckGo or Google and finding a direct link to the product page.

TLDR: it's difficult to do a fair comparison between users' experiences, because their search feature (like so many sites - I'm looking at you, Etsy!) is completely broken.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#282

Post by seesaw »

I had been a customer of Amazon for almost 20 years. I had Prime since day one. For me the breaking point was when they increased the fee and then decided to have ads for Prime Video. I sold the few Amazon stocks I had, and canceled Prime.

I found after I canceled Prime, my Amazon spending significantly went down. Sometimes I will add something to the cart, look at the shipping fee, and decide to abandon the cart. Canceling Prime made me realize I was ordering a lot of junk I didn’t need.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#283

Post by OutOfHere »

bornfreddy wrote: post #116
OutOfHere wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSRs lying has been a serious problem at Amazon and it's astonishing that Amazon hasn't duly addressed it.

I don't think there even is a problem, from Amazon's point of view. CSRs can't tell you the truth ("we will try to avoid refunding you or will delay it as much as possible"), they can't stay quiet (because then delaying won't be as efficient) and they can't blame the company (because... well, they can't). So lying is basically all they can do.

They should speak the truth, citing the Amazon policy on the matter, and provide the path for escalation.

As it stands, I will vote negatively for any CSR interaction that doesn't resolve my issue immediately while the conversation is still active, irrespective of whether they say they have addressed it.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#284

Post by OutOfHere »

onion2k wrote: post #176
OutOfHere wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CSRs lying has been a serious problem at Amazon and it's astonishing that Amazon hasn't duly addressed it.

In any high-churn job environment like customer support it's easier to assume people will leave rather than fire them. Most of the time you'll be right. That means there's no incentive to manage bad workers.

Isn't the high-churn more of a domestic issue? When the job gets outsourced, is there still high-churn?

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#285

Post by scoofy »

For me it was when prime raised it's price to $125, they stopped giving me any credit when my prime deliveries were late (they were more often than they weren't), and so I decided to walk over to Target in my neighborhood and see if it was more expensive -- Target was cheaper.

At that point I decided the experience of going for a walk when I need something in a pinch was nicer than ordering online, and if I need something obscure, I'll pay for shipping once or twice a year.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#286

Post by [deleted] »

distances wrote: post #183
aborsy wrote: post #155

Never had issues with Amazon, frequently shop. Local shops are scams in my area: expensive, don’t take back items, limited selections, don’t have the right items and have to settle for less, time consuming, bad customer service, can have language requirements for some people at the time of disputes (but not when selling), the reviews of items are not available and a lot of them turn out to be bad, long waiting lines…

> Local shops are scams in my area: expensive, don’t take back items, limited selections, don’t have the right items and have to settle for less, time consuming… None of these are scams, you're misusing the word. You mean a worse shopping experience, not defrauding the customer.

[deleted]

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#287

Post by qcnguy »

stanski wrote: post #243
qcnguy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but so what? All that proves is the account is aged. It doesn't prove it's not been taken over or sold. People move pretty regularly or order things for friends/family, a change of address doesn't mean anything.

So they sold their account to a fraudster who also moved into their old address? Sure, it's possible but now verging on the ridiculous. They can use common sense for the refund. They are just choosing not to.

You don't know they sold their account to a fraudster. You only know that the delivery address changed. That's a very weak signal.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#288

Post by qcnguy »

rasz wrote: post #238
qcnguy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is in a hard spot with this stuff. They have massive problems with refund fraud, where people buy things and returning fake or used items in the box. Asking for ID is one way they try to spot people who are engaged in this activity repeatedly. When you refused to show your ID and did a chargeback, you did the exact same thing actual fraudsters end up doing, and of course they need to fraudulent accounts as oth…

How is ID going to help with this in any way? They charge you (bank account/CC) and send you stuff (address), they inspect the return (or rather Should inspect it). What more would they need?

They don't inspect every return - that would make the already ropey economics of allowing returns very unviable - and it's often hard to detect return fraud because the fraudsters are returning an object that's nearly the same as the real thing, just used in ways that maybe aren't obvious given a casual inspection. Or they've raided it for parts and the object looks the same but the internals are gone.

It's not only Amazon that has this problem btw. Lots of online stores do. Return fraud is so prevalent that you should expect to this to become more common. A few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us.

Payment details aren't enough to reliably establish identity in many cases. If fighting this stuff were easy they'd have done it already, they aren't idiots.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#289

Post by madaxe_again »

Tadpole9181 wrote: post #276
madaxe_again wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, but it’s only available to Portuguese citizens - I am a legally resident alien, but am excluded from that system, as it requires a citizen card to start a claim.

Julgados de Paz is available to non-citizens, what are you talking about? So is contacting the livro de réclamations and making a chargeback with your card provider. How strange to try to claim the legal system has no reconciliation process for tourists or EU passer-bys. You're allowed to say you just couldn't be bothered to go through the trouble.

Go look at the website - you have to use authenticao.gov, which requires a digital mobile key, which requires a citizen card, which I cannot have unless I am a citizen. The offline process requires me to travel 200km each way to spend a day queuing.

Amazon Spain are Spanish, and are not subject to the Portuguese livro de reclamações.

As to making a chargeback - I like having a bank account, and being able to pay for things online - any time you do one you take a risk your bank will decide to throw freezes and KYC at you until you give up.

Re: Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish?

#290

Post by paffdragon »

I rarely buy from Amazon, but some small things I find only there. I ordered some phone accessories last week and needed a little more for free delivery so I added a shampoo. They dropped the shampoo without packaging in a paper bag with all the other stuff, when I opened it, of course, the shampoo was all over everything.

Their packaging and delivery quality is one of the worst. But they are still responsive to customer requests, although that is going down the sewer as well. I get often responses that look LLM/chatbot generated and often not answering my question. Or they try something like, sure I'll get you the refund as soon as you place the order again. Then I insist they refund now and so far I always got my money back.

So, basically their advantage for me is their sortiment (but you need to navigate through a lot of fake and garbage products), free returns and quick refund (often even without a return). But this is not a very strong one and I very rarely open their website - the pile of low quality listing is so off-putting that I generally avoid.

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