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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#341

Post by Symbiote »

r0fl wrote: post #30
aslilac wrote: post #2

Amazon is unusable at this point, and I don’t get how they have so many customers. Free and fast shipping is no longer exclusive to them, and there are others out there with far nicer websites and no shitty ad listings.

Nothing comes close to matching the ease of using amazon. In Canada if I need Kleenex I search kleenex, click buy now and it arrives to my house the same day! Sometimes I have to wait until the next day. The total time spent on the purchase is way under 1 minute. To use costco I have to buy at least $75 or shipping is not free. Walmart I have to fill out all my personal info and credit card info, and it's never same…

Don't you consider how wasteful this is? Packaging and transport for a box of tissues, then the packaging to dispose of.

Write yourself a note if necessary (post-it, phone app, whatever) and buy Kleenex the next time you're at the supermarket.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#342

Post by bombela »

low_key wrote: post #323
candiddevmike wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud anyone who leaves a non 5 star review, gets contacted by the company with bribes to make it 5 stars, and updates their review to report the company doing that.

I've left negative reviews and they tend to get removed. I was once even warned by Amazon that my account could be deactivated for violation of the ToS after posting a review that pointed out all of the other fake reviews on a particular product. Apparently the ToS allow fake reviews and disallow shining a light on it.

Yep, same experience here. Everytime I reported, my updated review was deleted.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#343

Post by iso1631 »

kennend3 wrote: post #303
NikolaNovak wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HaH, exactly. 25 years ago, I lived in a city of Rijeka. You could start from Croatia; enter & drive through entire country of Slovenia ; enter into Italy and go shopping into Trieste, two countries over - in 75km. Now I'm in the Greater Toronto Area, and my best friend lives about the same distance, officially in the same city or metro. There's just over two thousand kilometers between the capitals of two neighbouri…

> what is daily commute in GTA used to be a yearly vacation pilgrimage in my childhood :) This is something Europeans also overlook. I use to commute to Toronto every day. 100KM return trip daily, 500KM a week... I think Most Europeans would be surprised to know we have a train system which basically travels back and forth from Hamilton to Oshawa all day long.. 127KM one way. Basically the Width of England at the mor…

100km return, or 30 miles each way, that's not far at all. I used to drive 50 miles/80km each way into London 4 days a week when I worked in an office. My wife still does a 100km return trip to work. I have colleagues that commute 7 days in 14 on a 250km round trip into West London.

Your 127km one way train is about the same as the new Reading-Shenfield Cross London service which runs 6 times an hour 18 hours a day (well will do from next year), and less than the 160km Bedford-Brighton Thameslink service. It's pretty much the "Greater London Area", although that term is of course steeped in politics. The Paris RER D line is 190km and runs 466 trains a day, and is a "greater Paris area" train system

The Greater Toronto Area has broadly the same population as the Frankfurt Rhine-Main area, but is only half the area.

The "Slovenia is only 75km wide" claim is meaningless. Greenwich, CT to Oakland NJ is 75km and crosses the entire state of New York, a state with 10 times the population of Slovenia.

Indeed talking about New Jersey and Slovenia, they're a similar size, but NJ has about 5 times the population of Slovenia.

If something works for Slovenia, why doesn't it work for New Jersey?

So why is Toronto so small compared with Europe?

It's not a Geography problem, the challenges of serving the tiny number of people that like in rural North Dakota are a cruch to hide America's other infrastructure failings.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#344

Post by bombela »

mancerayder wrote: post #296
candiddevmike wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applaud anyone who leaves a non 5 star review, gets contacted by the company with bribes to make it 5 stars, and updates their review to report the company doing that.

They don't need to bribe anymore. Negative reviews get removed pretty easily. It's happened to me. It's the new normal. Airbnb is even worse, they used to (and still might) actually have customer service edit reviews. Your review will get removed with no notice, Amazon will let you know. If you remove some or most negative reviews but leave positive ones, what do you get.

I have noticed this for negative review on products from big and well known companies. About technical flaws. Like a gaming computer mouse where pressing left and right click together wouldn't work. Until you update the firmware of the mouse (yep... yep you wouldn't think a mouse should be buggy nor firmware updateable).

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#345

Post by Guest9081239812 »

cunidev wrote: post #106
jabo wrote: post #53

I recently had to buy something mundane - a light bulb, with a specific lumen and color temperature spec. Weeding out all the junk listings, ads and clearly fake reviews, I ended up spending an hour trying to get to the one I wanted to buy. Had a very similar experience for another product as well. At this point, I hesitate to look up stuff on Amazon just considering the time it takes to find stuff. I much rather pre…

For most products, at least in Europe you can get the same cheap junk of Amazon listings from eBay at 20-40% lower prices, and usually (slightly) higher quality one from brick and mortar stores at the Amazon price. I avoid Amazon in principle since many years (unless I _really_ need a product there), but that has never been hard, considering that most smaller stores always offered me more convenient prices, less hass…

It's the same thing in Canada. It's easy to identify the mass produced Chinese products. You search for an item on Amazon and find 30 different "companies" with random names selling the identical product with different logos. The prices will range from $10-30. I know if I go to eBay I can buy the same product for $2 with free shipping from China. I only have to decide if I want the product delivered tomorrow through Amazon or in 1-2 months from China.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#346

Post by cycomanic »

sanitycheck wrote: post #246

My process for getting usable results on Amazon (.co.uk, presumably the others too): 1. Search for thing 2. Filter by department (necessary for 3) 3. Filter by Seller: only Amazon 4: Filter by reviews: 4 stars+ 5: Sort by price, Low > High 6: (Further filters as appropriate) 7: Look at only products with a high number of reviews 8: For every product, "See all reviews" and filter on "Verified purchase only" and "Show…

Are other sites so bad in the US? I can count the number of times I've been tempted to buy with Amazon in Europe on one hand. I mean pretty much every other webshop has a search experience that is orders of magnitude better then add Geizhals to the mix and you're almost guaranteed to find the cheapest offer, in much less clicks than even trying to find something that is legit and matches the search criteria on amazon. Why do people still use it?

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#347

Post by naijaboiler »

Retric wrote: post #87
groestl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are you so sure you’re not getting ripped off? If you do not _feel_ you've been ripped off, does it matter?

Just because you don’t realize something gave you cancer doesn’t mean you can safely ignore the cancer. Feeling like you got ripped off is one thing, having your house burn down from faulty electronics is much worse etc etc.

bought an apple charger, nearly set my house on fire. I opened up the one I bought from amazon, and the old one I had at home. weight, number of components, etc clearly told me it was a differnt product. Yeah I was done buying anything electronic from amazon.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#348

Post by Guest9081239812 »

rzimmerman wrote: post #178

Watching my parents get duped by Amazon results is maddening. They’re used to being able to trust a retailer or at least some consequences for scams and poor quality. People less scam-savvy than myself get understandably confused by “Amazon recommend” or a slightly lower price. But the minute I search for something on Amazon a dread comes over me of “here we go”. My danger center kicks in and I have to keep your wits…

I visited my family the other month and my mother was searching for a product. I told her it's likely available on Amazon and opened the website. When I started scrolling she started commenting on the prices and how she can buy some of the products for 10x less in the store. I then explained to her that unlike a store, Amazon prices are mostly meaningless, and the site will have the identical product selling at 10 different price points.

People don't have to worry about that problem when they walk into a Walmart. They know the pricing has been carefully reviewed before the product touches the shelves. They know they're not going to see two identical products at Walmart with different stamped logos selling for $5 and $30. There's a level of trust you can buy any item and it's a fair value.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#349

Post by Beaver117 »

yalogin wrote: post #306

Over the last few years Amazon has been overwhelmed by Chinese goods and over time the search results has become similar to aliexpress. I would have never heard the manufacturer’s name and will never remember them either. All of them have close to 5 star rating and there is no way to even judge if they are any good. You buy if you accept that. Feels like it’s time for this to be disrupted.

Aliexpress products aren't bad. And although they're very cheap at the source, I'm willing to pay a gigantic markup to get it in 2 days with free refunds rather than 2 months.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#350

Post by manmal »

fmajid wrote: post #244

Amazon is the third largest advertising company after Google and Meta. Its ad revenue is $32B (and growing fast, the run rate is $40B). That is half the revenue of AWS, which is worth 70% of Amazon's market cap. The inescapable conclusion is that Amazon's advertising is worth the remaining 30% of Amazon's market cap and Amazon's e-commerce arm is deemed worthless by Wall Street , its only purpose being to support the…

What rationale is behind comparing revenue with market cap? I thought price is rather judged against earnings, eg by looking at the P/E ratio.
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