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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

#71

Post by DebtDeflation »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #34

This among many reasons is is why I cancelled my prime membership. The quality control is abysmal. It's become an eBay, but without a proper dispute system, and crazy prices. Many goods get listed at multiples of the price available elsewhere and if you're not paying attention you can get screwed. It's totally buyer beware. The trust that Amazon established over the years has been lost. I ordered something on Amazon…

>This among many reasons is is why I cancelled my prime membership

I'm about there as well. I have Prime solely for free shipping, and it's frustrating as hell that when there are multiple listings for an item, the one with "Free Prime Shipping" is a few dollars more expensive, generally by an amount equal to the shipping cost.

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

#72

Post by danso »

sergiotapia wrote: post #36
stanski wrote: post #24

They were sued for the recklessly mislabeled helmet and still didn't take the posting down? Even if they could've argued that they themselves were fooled by the seller initially, not following up after the guy was killed points to a much bigger issue. Basically they just don't give a shit. Side note: I'm filled with dread just thinking about buying a motorcycle helmet from amazon.

Take the number of helmets in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Pulling a listing is not the same as issuing a recall. And your arithmetic does nothing to account for the hit to reputation and trust.

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

#73

Post by MaupitiBlue »

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?

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

#74

Post by NikolaNovak »

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #59
marktangotango wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that but they have the willful bait and switch when it comes to shippng method. Pay for 2 day, but it defaults to 7, you have to manually select 2 day. I got burned by that, never again. Edit this was a couple of weeks before Christmas, so I figured it was a "seasonal" "feature".

I had about 150 orders last year and never saw this happen.

Interesting; I have about ~50-70 prime orders a year, in Canada (Amazon.ca), and that's the norm for me - it'll show 2-3 options for shipping, and the slowest free option is usually picked by default. If I want same day / next day shipping, I need to click on that button. Still free, no worries, but needs that extra interaction.

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

#75

Post by leemcalilly »

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’ve long thought this sort of thing would be a really good business model. You could launch a bunch of vertical sites and use the same shipping / fulfillment system. Huge irony would be if you did this with Fulfillment by Amazon, but it would probably work.

I guess the core problem is that when you’re looking for something new, browsing Amazon is a total mess. It would be much easier to do a web search and find bullshitfreebulbs.com to make your purchase.

But if it’s something you buy often, Prime + order history is easily the fastest, most convenient way to buy something.

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

#76

Post by Darmody »

t34543 wrote: post #49

I never had a problem (that I know of) with fakes on Amazon. I did cancel my prime membership and switched to Walmart. I feel like prices went up and quality went down. I wish I could move stuff away at work, we spend millions each month on AWS.

Some days ago I wanted to buy a Mi Band 4. I thought of Amazon. Let me make a search right now to see what I find.

Here's a screenshot (not in English but easy to understand what's going on): https://i.imgur.com/hRJIiKk.png

The first one has 1.5k votes and 1.5/5 stars. If you get into the commets to see what's wrong you will see it's a fake. It's a M4 Smart Band, nothing to do with the Mi Band 4.

The second one has 2.5/5 stars and looks like people are receiving also a fake.

The others look good but who knows. All of them are from 3d party sellers.

Now I can buy the Mi Band 4 from Aliexpress for 36 euro (33 if I wait for a promo in 3 days) and I can be 100% sure that I'll receive the original one within 2-4 days. I can also buy it a bit cheaper from China but delivery takes longer.

I can give you another example. I want to buy a bag for my laptop. Almost everything I see in Amazon is from Aliexpress but more expensive.

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

#77

Post by djsumdog »

Amazon got this way due to competition in the early 2000s with eBay. Today there aren't a lot of mom-n-pop e-stores. Sure some of it is coming back with Shopify, Magento and others, but most people starting off in online retail just create a store on one of the big marketplaces: Amazon, eBay, Newegg, Reverb or Etsy. All of them both sell their own products and are also meta-resellers.

I wrote about the death of the mom-n-pop estore not too long ago:

https://penguindreams.org/blog/the-death-of-the-mom-and-pop-...

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

#78

Post by tannhaeuser »

sergiotapia wrote: post #3

We used to buy from Amazon since it was a stamp of quality. I tried buying a usb-c cable for my mac mini, and it was terrible. So many brands and no way of knowing what to get. Today you might as well buy from Ebay. What online store exists today, where I can be guaranteed to buy quality things? Do they no longer exist?

Go to a manufacturer's direct sales site, or buy at respected brick-and-mortar shops or online retailers who have reputation to loose.

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

#79

Post by visarga »

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?

Depends on the seller. That's the whole point - they make it hard to know if you can trust or not the seller.

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

#80

Post by ethagknight »

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,…

For lightbulbs, try 1000bulbs.com. Simple searches will reveal better sites, just scroll past the usual catch-alls like amazon and Walmart, Home Depot or Best Buy. pencils? Pencils.com. Gaffer tape? Gafferpower.com. Literally anything. It’s a bummer google SEO pushes the bigs for everything when there is better value further down.
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