81–90 of 101 posts
The only thing I use Amazon for is price guidance - is that hardware $1, $2, $10 or $100? I have not bought from them since 2005. There is no need
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing. If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it. Then call your lawyer , who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal. If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court. The…
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I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.
I'm not sure that's "catching on". One would think that if they can't reliably offer a service, they shouldn't be offering it in the first place.
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I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep. Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice…
It’s as if all the people working at physical stores, who we decided were pointless waste of money, actually had some function.
Amazon got it's start in that world undercutting the brick and mortar stores with their carefully curated manufacturers and buyers. In the process they completely destroyed it. Which is why 80% of the stuff for sale now is shitty.
Amazon, Walmart, Etsy... my kingdom for a marketplace that doesn't become just a dumping ground for shady fly-by-night dropshippers.
Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.” If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
Amazon, Walmart, Etsy... my kingdom for a marketplace that doesn't become just a dumping ground for shady fly-by-night dropshippers.
This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)
* One cart for everything you need to order
* Fairly predictable shipping and tracking, especially for FBA stuff vs. the random shipping companies vs random shippers you have never heard about or weird shipping options selected by the seller (i.e. ID checks required where that makes no sense at all, preventing the carrier from just dropping the package at the door when you're not home)
* Global shipping with tariffs/fees included in the checkout price - brand stores often don't even ship at all outside their operational area
* The ability to get your money back with high confidence when there are problems vs. smaller sellers that just ghost you.
Amazon has been doing their best to reduce these advantages by making it harder to report problems with orders and also having more sellers that do their own unpredictable shipping.
I tend to find ebay less shady than Amazon these days, which is a bit disapointing really.
a) You could search for keywords without also matching keywords that have your keyword as a sub-string
b) "Sort by lowest price including shipping" actually did what it says
As it is you often have to wade through tons of undesired crap to get to what you want.
I also don't like that eBay sellers can see that you viewed their product and send you price offers.
Oh and let's not forget the popup nagging you to use their app for a discount ... while you are typing something into the search bar.
The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.