What is going wrong at Amazon?

They matured, dominated the market, got lazy and comfortable, and basically took over the role of incumbent.

This is top of mind for me as my amazon use has declined from a peak a few years ago (with a dead cat bounce during covid) and I'm now actively avoiding them. As you say, for items you are not already familiar with, they are completely untrustworthy, and for stuff I know about and want to buy, a) they are unreliable for availability, b) they put so much effort into trying to trick me into signing up for prime or subscriptions, or for paying shipping when I qualify for free shipping, that I feel like I'm trading with a criminal. I can get better treatment literally anywhere else.

For better or worse, they changed the face of commerce, now they are an entitled dinosaur that I'll be happy to see pushed to the side.

For me, a huge part of it is the mingling of direct manufacturer sales (or authorized distributors) with random third parties. That makes it impossible to trust that a received item is actually what it's claimed to be in he listing.

In addition, there's zero barrier to entry for sellers including basic stuff like safety certifications, so you see constantly about a billion entries of the same rebranded cheap AliExpress crap over and over.

Cancelled Prime membership this year due to a range of factors:

1. Product selection declining (one good product now has 20 knock off brands with 4.5-5.0 star review scores making it impossible to determine what quality level you're buying)

2. Increase in counterfeit goods enabled by the business model

3. Increase in awareness that the firm is not acting ethically or responsibly

4. Maturation of competitors that now offer similar online retail experiences, albeit within market subsets

The marketplace.

If I wanted to deal with a bunch of randos on the internet, I'd use eBay.

In the last few years, I've had more issues with Amazon than the prior two decades. Almost all of these issues included a marketplace seller that blamed Amazon for the issue, and Amazon blamed them.

I appreciate that Amazon spoiled us with great prices and prompt shipping (10 days was a normal wait in 2000), but the marketplace is terribly inconsistent and this isn't what I want from my shopping experience.

Purchased a bad HDD? Amazon 1st-party would ship me a replacement before the return was even verified shipped back. Shipped by marketplace? Everyone has their own policy, and it can take a month or longer to resolve an issue that Amazon made painless.

So I feel like there's been a bait-and-switch. If I can't find a Sold/Fulfilled by Amazon product, I'll look elsewhere no problem now. The hassle wasn't worth it five years ago.

Same for NewEgg. Last year I purchased five Mellanox MCX311A-XCAT... the prices on NewEgg vary from $70-$300, and I was seeing the same variance on Amazon. From sellers with 1-star or no reviews. I ended up buying five on eBay for $150, from a seller with 4k+ reviews. Arrived in a week.

Marketplaces are great for company margins, but proving not-so-great for customers.

It kinda feels like how eBay went - just flooded with loads and loads of low quality tat. That is great if you just need something cheap and cheerful, but when you are looking for quality items it is hard unless you know specific brands which is not always obvious - example I had recently was a replacement shower hose after the Amazon-bought one I got two months earlier broke... I have no idea what a reputable brand is there! You end up just basically trying your luck since reviews cannot be trusted.

Can't say fake stuff has been a problem for me in the UK. Stuff is delivered fine, you just can't rely on the item's quality. Amazon win hands-down for delivery - no one else comes close in the UK as you are typically still left with 5-7 day delivery windows Vs reliable same-day/next-day with Amazon.

(I tried to leave a negative review of the shower hose that broke after 2 months - very matter-of-fact and even-headed wording... the review was rejected for not meeting "community guidelines" or something which I thought says a lot about the review problem with Amazon)

The website experience is terrible. Search results initially surface organic results, but a millisecond later, the sponsored results are loaded, which shift the page layout.

Once you're on the page, it's hard to make out key details because of the god-awful CMS their vendors have to use. Some just end up posting giant JPG posters instead of text. Oh, and the page is swarming with 10 different alternatives to the product you are looking at.

These days I think Amazon cares more about landing fat AWS contracts than minding the store.

I noticed it a few years ago, too. The fake reviews are glaringly obvious most times.

I've seen what sellers do, they'll sell a decent product, something that's like just hairties where nobody is really going to give negative reviews, then they'll add a "colour" to it, except instead of black hair ties, it's a smart watch. Then they'll remove the hairties, and ride on the smart watch now having 2k positive reviews. Here's the actual one I spotted: https://www.amazon.com/Fitness-Tracker-Activity-Waterproof-S... Look at the questions, look at the reviews. They were selling a totally different product, then added a 'variation' (of a totally different product).

This kinda trash plagues Amazon. I've actually been relying on Reddit for reviews on brands I'm not familiar with. It's sad, in a way, that I have to research products before buying from Amazon.

The quickest way I've been able to really validate reviews is to check out all the two and three star reviews. Those avoid the 1 star operator error "I'm too stupid to operate this product, so the product sucks" and the mostly useless or fake 5 star reviews. The 2 and 3 stars actually provide the most useful info about any problems with a product. Those are usually issues that don't even bother me or apply to me.

My experience trying to buy a camera on Amazon was awful.

I try to buy when I see the price a bit lower, it turns out it's always scammers that will cancel the order (by mistake according to them) and then proceed asking you to directly transfer the money to their bank account with a discount for the trouble of cancelling.

I got refunded by Amazon without a problem each time and never did the transfer to the scammers, but still is an awful waste of time to deal with this when it's so easy for them to sport this scam.

Does Amazon actually have a problem? I have certainly encountered (and been paid to write as I answered one of the cards) fake reviews, but the products have always been ok. Not great, but for the $10 I spent, acceptable.

This seems mostly to be a technical complaint, in the way that people complain about Electron wasting RAM.

They won't do anything that threatens the money fire hose. If they start enforcing rules around fake reviews, counterfeits, used or returned items being sold as "new", or co-mingling, that might increase costs and decrease sales.

That, and complacency and coasting on customers' good will that was built up in the years to decades prior. My older relatives, for example, use Amazon out of habit.

My friend who sells $$$$$$ through Amazon says Chinese manufacturers are absolutely unscrupulous and engage in every kind of fraud, IP theft, adulteration and so forth, and Amazon mostly looks the other way unless they are really pressured or lawsuits are brought. Then the Chinese seller disappears and pops up under a different name with the same tactics. Rinse and repeat.

This hasn't been my experience in the UK. I can't speak about the reviews but their deliveries are pretty good - very reliable next day delivery with Prime.

I avoided them for a while, but where I live Amazon is unfortunately the only online company that will ship to me and the local stores are very limited in the tiny nearby town. I still avoid electronics and anything not directly fulfilled by Amazon and anything that has a small number of reviews. I will for sure never buy anything computer related from them again. Standard household items, common supplements, clothing that is fulfilled by them directly, those have all been fine for me.

Last two years have been flawless for me. I purchase about 50-70 times/year from them, and here in Michigan (Ann Arbor) things have gotten better. Lots more same-day delivery, and deliveries have gotten very reliable - I've only had a single delayed delivery (arrived 3 days after it was supposed to) - and Amazon Refunded me for that (and then the package arrived).

I love the free shipping, and I have a pretty large list of stuff on camelcamelcamel that both lets me get a decent price and prevents me from overpaying for anything.

I'm really happy with the selection - but I don't know if I would go to them to purchase anything like a computer, laptop, or camera - mostly household goods, low-end appliances, and that sort of thing. I always go direct to the retailer/manufacturer for anything significant.

So - just an anecdote, but my experience with Amazon has been really good. Also - I love The Expanse, and that was worth $20-$30 of the prime membership right there.

Oh, one sort of Amazon related thing that go worse - we used to have Free delivery from Whole Foods, which I made use of once a month or so - they're adding a $10 fee to that. On the pro side, might mean more delivery slots, but on the con side - that's another $120/year or so.

> Amazon Basics has knocked off Peak Design's Everyday Sling, right down to the shape of the tag--and incredibly, they gave their copy the exact same name.

https://www.core77.com/posts/106033/Amazon-Basics-Knocks-Off...

I ordered 2 books from Amazon last week. An email said 'delivered' but nothing in the letterbox or outside the house. A chat to a friendly neighbour revealed he had a parcel put in between his dustbins. I went to my bins and there were the books. Not pleased at this, I expect a sane experience.

Amazon's only business is your eyeballs. Their physical and digital e-commerce is a platform to monetize your eyeballs. Prime Videos, eyeballs. FireTV eyeballs. Kindle, eyeballs. The products they directly sell you are basically a loss leader. The real money is in monetizing your eyeballs at some point I'm the shopping journey.

The retail and delivery / supply chain part of the business is about ruthless efficiency and delivering against customer expectations. The problems you me too are the hard parts of retail. Amazon is working on them, but not solving those problems well doesn't get in the way of their strategy and ambitions.

Will this be Walmart's opportunity? Walmart is pushing their amazon prime membership equivalent at $99 a year right now.

What Amazon to me today, is an eBay with trustworthy return policy and prime free 2-day shipping. Nothing more and nothing less.

You'd have to take your own responsibility to do research and identify quality product and reasonable price. Don't have time to do research, don't fall for amazon's review, but sign up Costco, that's what Costco does the best, they only select the best quality/close to best price product to list. But because of that, costco's selection is limited.

I've only used amazon to actually order things twice, but I've looked at products and searched for things many times.

The reviews, listings, search and product-pages have always been terrible in my experience. In a some cases even ebay has more structured product info. The search experience and categorization feels like it's trying to steer me to buy all the things I don't want to buy and I never find the things I do.

My addon question to this, is what alternatives do we have?

What service that gives us 2 day or less shipping. Has significant enough stock that I don't have drive all over town to 10 different stores to get 3 of the same thing. If there was a resource that had these features I would drop Amazon in a second.

Amazon appears to be more interested in bottom line than being a curator of reliable content.

I've honestly placed 100 orders in the last year, without issue. Couple returns in there, no issues.

This thread keeps popping up, but obviously the issues are rather rare. See Amazon's continuing growth if you want an example.

No problem with Amazon here. It’s an impressive company!

I think this essay is worth reading to answer your question.

https://zackkanter.com/2019/03/13/what-is-amazon/

Tl;dr incentives.

Remember when prime meant you got your package in two days, not that’s they’d maybe sometimes put it in the mail in two days?

Unregulated Capitalism

Monopoly happened.

By the metrics society judges people and companies, Amazon is fucking killing it, few are doing things better (Apple?).

You still buy from them, what incentive do they have to return to former quality?