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Shopping Sucks Now

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Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#51

Post by lifeformed »

jkhwleroiu wrote: post #41
papreclip wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brick and mortar shops can't stop you from coming in and finding the perfect item, then buying it online to save money. I bought an office chair recently and didn't feel confident picking one without trying chairs out in person. The chair I settled on was $100 cheaper online

I wouldn't mind paying a few pounds for them to let me browse the products. Maybe this is a viable business model.

Maybe they can offer a super wide selection available to see, since they don't need to carry stock. And perhaps you can order from them if you like it, and they run an online store where they ship it from, and you get your $10 back as a discount.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#52

Post by truebosko »

I know where this article is trying to go, but as someone who rarely shops .. damn is it nice.

I went to Uniqlo in Faneuil Hall here in Boston yesterday. Simply walking into the store is an _experience_. It's in a historic district, surrounded by quick bites and other fun knick knacks, and the store itself is beautiful laid out.

This is where the physical store absolutely destroys the abysmal online experience. Curation and the human experience.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#53

Post by refurb »

nerdponx wrote: post #6

Or stop trying to hyper-optimize? Buy from a handful of trusted brands; if it doesn't work out, don't buy from them again. Like what people did before all this information was available.

Exactly. Unless your decision has lasting, serious ramifications on your life, just make a decision.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#54

Post by basseq »

Retric wrote: post #47
basseq wrote: post #4

That "tyranny of perfect information" begets FOMO. If you'd looked at one more site or one more review you might have discovered a "better" (cheaper, high quality, higher utility) item. I'd add that's it's worse because the world is flatter. Why should I buy Brand Item when I can get a version from Alibaba for 10-20%? If it truly is comparable, then why pay the markup when the internet lets me cut out the middleman?…

Consistent quality is the entire point of brands. Find a soap you like and you can mindlessly get the same thing for the next 20+ years. Which also generally means you can pick a random brand and not end up with junk as long as trust the supply chain. The issue is when you want something different than the millions of other people out there. Sure, things change and the quality may slip, but there is only so much time…

That's kind of the point, though. Supply chains are becoming more transparent and accessible to the end customer, so in 2020, you have a much better chance of going "directly to the source" than you did 20 years ago.

So the FOMO is paying a brand markup for consistent quality you could get for less.

Then you have "established" brands that are just trying to maximize profit. And "new" brands that are just AliExpress resellers. So trust that even a Brand™ experience will be a good one is waning.

In other words, the premise that you're paying for time savings is less assured, and the information to actually make comparison shopping worthwhile is right there.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#55

Post by arkitaip »

jkhwleroiu wrote: post #50
umvi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently I only trust reddit for "genuine" reviews. Seems like Amazon reviews these days are gamed to the max. Once companies figure this out and reddit has a high degree of astroturf it will be impossible to find out what normal, unbiased (as in don't have an agenda) humans think about a product.

But reddit is flawed in a different way - it's extremely biased towards the trendy and the fashionable. For example if you search reddit for what computer mouse to buy, you'll be told that unless it weighs less than 70g and has holes, it's utter shit and not worth your money.

That's when you hit up r/builtForLifeMice... That's one of the strengths of Reddit: you can get ever increasingly niche with your community.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#56

Post by kn0where »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #24

The author could just buy whatever gloves are marked as "Amazon's Choice". Of course, then she is assuming that Amazon has her best interests at heart, and hasn't just chosen whichever product makes them the most money. But, by shopping at a store with a more limited product selection than Amazon, you are relying on the same assumption. Also, the assumption is almost certainly wrong in all cases.

Amazon’s choice is just an algorithmic label that sometimes gets applied to total crap, there’s no actual curation.

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#57

Post by wool_gather »

nerdponx wrote: post #6

Or stop trying to hyper-optimize? Buy from a handful of trusted brands; if it doesn't work out, don't buy from them again. Like what people did before all this information was available.

Where do you get your initial trusted list from, and what do you do when "it doesn't work out" and you need a replacement supplier?

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#58

Post by Merrill »

Reedx wrote: post #3

Anyone working on a Trader Joes meets Amazon? That curates maybe 1-3 versions of things, largely eliminating paradox of choice. I guess Costco is kind of a bulk version of that... Also I've been increasingly interested in just buying things once and having them last a decade+, ideally a lifetime (less waste). But this takes a lot of research. Trader Joes does a good job of curating groceries and I've come to trust th…

You can search for Amazon Basics or Amazon Essentials, which seem to be listings of high volume commodity products. However, I don't see adult dress gloves in Amazon Essentials. There are kids gloves. And if you want high style, these products aren't for you.

The other alternative is to use specific branded sites, such as LL Bean or REI. These will provide premium products at a premium price.

Finally, you can go directly to the manufacturer. If you want Marmot gloves, go to marmot.com. (Of course, it's unlikely that Marmot actually manufactures their gloves.)

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#59

Post by arkitaip »

mikeyouse wrote: post #5
Reedx wrote: post #3

Anyone working on a Trader Joes meets Amazon? That curates maybe 1-3 versions of things, largely eliminating paradox of choice. I guess Costco is kind of a bulk version of that... Also I've been increasingly interested in just buying things once and having them last a decade+, ideally a lifetime (less waste). But this takes a lot of research. Trader Joes does a good job of curating groceries and I've come to trust th…

Brandless is pursuing something down this line: https://brandless.com/

Brandless makes no sense to me. They mostly buy from China and their products are more expensive than they should be (their product descriptions don't offer any arguments why, at least). They claim to be health and environmentally-conscious but there's no relevant information to read on the product pages.

Take this random Brandless product: https://brandless.com/products/stainless-steel-wooden-turner

Why on Earth would you buy it? How can you possibly tell that it's eco-friendly or not?

Re: Shopping Sucks Now

#60

Post by graaben »

ropiwqefjnpoa wrote: post #2

Something that has been lost is genuine reviews. First you have all the sponsored reviews and then all the equally worthless "I don't know how to use it so it's junk" or "it never arrived" 1 star reviews. And so many "review" sites look like they've been procedurally generated then SEO optimized and filled with ads.

I used to work for on of those "review" websites and it completely ruined my trust in most online product review sites. It's all just affiliate links, optimized for which offer pays out the highest conversion fee, with little to zero regard for the actual product.

I would pay a decent amount of money for a tool that just filtered out any sites in Google search that promote products using affiliate links.

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