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Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#421

Post by shellfishgene »

mrweasel wrote: post #284
walthamstow wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This + the eBay sellers in the UK use Royal Mail so goods are delivered by my postman, who already walks past my house every morning anyway

As someone who dislikes eBay and prefer to deal with companies, rather then individuals, the UKs preference for eBay is interesting. Working for an eCommerce site we noticed that customers would prefer to deal with a lady in Scotland over us, for certain types of products. She just posted our product on eBay, added a few £ to the price, ordered them from us, typed in her customers address in the shipping fields. Work…

It's weird, one would expect eBay to be more of a wild west than Amazon marketplace, but in my experience the eBay sellers are fast and mostly trustworthy.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#422

Post by shellfishgene »

Beaver117 wrote: post #349
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.

At least to Europe shipping times from Aliexpress continue to get better, I often get stuff after a week now, mostly within 3.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#423

Post by shellfishgene »

secondcoming wrote: post #17
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.

Yes, the proliferation of stuff being sold by six letter Chinese sellers is incredible. It’s basically Ali Express but with faster shipping.

As I mentioned above, Amazon now also lists products that are shipped directly from China and take weeks. They have the tracking info from Yanwen shipping on the site, so this must be officially supported.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#425

Post by Terretta »

AlexandrB wrote: post #272

Is it just me or does it feel like the major tech companies have completely lost the war against bots/spam? Search results are regressing across multiple online services[1] - Google, Amazon, and app stores are all filled with junk and scams. Reviews for products are generally filled to the brim with bots or paid reviews. [1] I've noticed the re-emergence of Experts Exchange style sites on Google recently. For technic…

Try https://kagi.com and the Programming Lens

(Kagi is worth the subscription even w/o that: user is paying for search, not advertisers paying for eyeballs.)

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#426

Post by Marsymars »

> “We are dedicated to providing customers with a world-class shopping experience, including working hard every day to ensure the ads they see are useful, informative, and help make shopping a little bit easier,” said spokesman Patrick Graham.

If they were actually confident in this, they could give every user the option to toggle ads on or off. Maybe even limit that option to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#427

Post by fleddr »

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…

Yep, and then when you finally have your sights on a product, there will always be that one review:

"Cable didn't work, instead it shortcircuited my TV".

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#428

Post by [deleted] »

jrs235 wrote: post #95
kennend3 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now Amazon is nothing more than AliExpress with faster shipping. Shame. This. Once i realized what was taking place on amazon I simply moved to AliExpress. I mean if i am going to get something from there anyhow i might as well save the middleman fees and take the hit on shipping. I canceled my prime membership a while ago as well. I don't see how amazon can continue to simply be a front end for AliExpress for long…

But even their shipping (with Prime too!) is getting slower and slower. Prime's selling point used to be free 2 day shipping. Shipping is still "free" but many items take 4 days (or more now).

[deleted]

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#429

Post by Terretta »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #337
chrisan wrote: post #181

I don't mind the ads, they are clearly labeled "sponsored". What I hate is all the fake reviews influencing my choice. You buy something highly reviewed then receive some giftcard/offer or something in the packaging saying to leave a review and get something in return. Now I have to "reddit productX" and read there before making a choice.

We're building a product research engine with Reddit's favorite products in one place: https://looria.com/reddit/overview

Welp, there goes reddit product discussions. This is why we can't have nice things! (J/K)

Love the idea, and I actually used your site when shopping for espresso machines recently.

I just worry about social media agencies turning their tactics onto ranking in your algo. There are SEO kings reading this thread right now...

Re: Almost everything on Amazon is becoming an ad

#430

Post by tomrod »

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…

Ads are infective. This is why folks are worried about Apple jumping into that revenue stream.
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