Anyone else quickly losing confidence in Amazon?

Losing confidence? No, I lost that years ago. For quite some time the vast majority of the listings have been drop-shipped AliExpress garbage. Many of them are obvious because of terrible photoshops, randomly named branding, and those strange bold brackets in the product description.

But some can be harder to spot because of tricks that sellers use to essentially hijack listings for other products to carry all the positive reviews along. Or they may just go the route of putting completely fake reviews on the product. Some may even be from verified purchasers because they packed a card along with the product offering compensation for a 5 star review. Or they can get verified reviews in an even slimier way involving ordering from themselves and then shipping random crap to people who've they've sent stuff to before.

And then there's the inventory that's poisoned with counterfeits. Thanks to inventory co-mingling counterfeit and legit products can end up getting mixed together. There's a chance that even buying from a fully legit listing will end up with you getting sent a counterfeit product.

However, despite all of that I do still use Amazon. Their immense investment into logistics means that many things will make it to me next-day. And their return policies allow me to order with the confidence that if I get a fraudulent item (or just something I don't like) it will be fairly painless to get a replacement or my money back.

That said, I have also been making more efforts over the years to not use Amazon. I tend to buy all my major electronics from Best Buy or direct from the manufacturer. And I would never buy any food or medicine from Amazon. I don't want to risk things that go into me being counterfeit.

A seller offered me a gift certificate if I left a 5 star review. Basically a little note in the box saying if I left a 5 star review, took a screenshot & sent it to their email address, they'd send me the gift certificate.

It was not a 5 star product. It was a 2 star product, at best.

I tried to mention the fact they were paying for reviews in my review (to explain the other 5 stars).

Amazon rejected my review.

It's against Amazon policy to let others know that sellers are buying reviews.

I feel like you're several years late to the party here. I think it's pretty common knowledge at this point that certain types of goods sold on Amazon have a huge chance of being counterfeit and everyone knows reviews are faked/not to be trusted blindly.

At this point people seem to not care since Amazon will give a refund/exchange pretty much no questions asked. It's still extremely annoying and it's definitely not a good look for their business, but I assume the number crunchers have determined actually dealing with the fraud isn't yet worth it financially.

The search feels actively hostile. It returns so many things that are very clearly NOT matches for what I am looking for, and are things it would rather sell me. And of course there are SO many 'sponsored' results to wade through.

On the product page itself there are a few different page sections that show alternative products or similar products to consider. Only the single one at the very bottom of the page is not a sponsored listing. ALL the other ones are just sponsored listings.

I actually have more confidence in random ebay used listings lately. At least I get what was described.

I have not knowingly received any “bad“ purchases from Amazon. Having heard scary stories like these has put me off ordering things from there for sure. But the convenience is just too great for me to give it up.

Maybe I am just fortunate to have not had an issue, maybe the counterfeiters are very good, or maybe I am just clueless, or some combination of these.

I try to stick to only name brand items. If there is a product that looks compelling but is from a brand I have not heard of, I generally look at both their website and other reputable retailers which sell that same product.

I largely ignore the reviews. Not necessarily because they are scammy (which I’m sure they are) but because they are so largely subjective. Reviewers will often give a one-star rating for a product because shipping was slower than expected. Or a one-star because the product didn’t package a standard USB-A cable or didn’t include AA batteries. Or a one-star rating in protest something of the company or product itself. Many times it appears the reviewer did not read the description closely enough, and accidentally purchased the wrong product, for which they blame the retailer.

I almost always purchase from Amazon.com as the seller vs. some Harry’s Tech Supply Store. Exceptions are made if there are thousands of Store reviews and a 95%+ positive rating.

In other cases, I will simply purchase the item from the official brand website, or some other retailer. It’s frustrating that Amazon allows commingling of products from different suppliers and retailers in a common bin. It’s also frustrating that other retailers like Walmart and target seem to have followed suit.

Every review I’ve left that’s under 5 stars has been rejected for trivial technical reasons. I received a trash can that was heavily scratched and with poor quality hinges. Review rejected because it contained references to “issues that might have occurred during shipping.”

Every product on the site seems to be rated 4.5+, which makes sense if they’re rejecting reviews in this way.

I reported https://www.amazon.com/sp?seller=AFN4IFVLN4CLK months ago; using a seller name of "𝘈𝓂𝒶𝘻𝘰𝘯.𝘤𝘰𝘮". Still up there, despite support saying they'd pass along to the fraud team.

AWS is great, but the Amazon.com side of things feels like a slow, steady decline for years now.

I bought a “TXINLEI 858D 110V Solder Station, Digital Display SMD Hot Air Rework Station Solder Iron Kit Heat Gun, Tweezers, Desoldering Pump” on Amazon, because it is a cheap hot-air soldering station. It should not be sold in the United States. The plug on it is wired backwards, so the cable on it is also wired backwards. But they both use the industry-standard IEC C13 / C14 shape. So if you accidentally use the plug on your desktop, it’ll work, but the chassis will be hot instead of neutral. And the same thing if you use a regular plug with this device: the neutral and hot pins are swapped, so you’ll have a hot chassis. It’s illegal. Yet, it’s so cheap, and easy to remedy at home!

As others said, lost it long ago.

I try to avoid at all costs for buying electronics, as so much counterfiet stuff. Apple gear "designed in Carlifonia" proudly displayed. (real spelling found on Amazon gear sold from the Amazon Apple Store).

Lately just about anything computer related has been way jacked up in price from all the 3rd party sellers drowning out any direct-by-amazon. I go to Target or BestBuy to get normal prices. NewEgg may have something you can find still in the normal range of jacked prices in the sea of the same overpriced resellers there too.

Just about any books I've unfortunately bought from them come bent, folded, and the covers riped off. I've returned 90% of them. Now that Amazon has driven physical book stores out-of-business (and the two BN stores left near me carry about a single shelf of way out-of-date tech books), have to get very creative finding where to buy books. I miss the days of having real packaging protecting the books during shipping.

Unfortunately, many computer subject authors have moved to self-published through Amazon, and I end up with a book that is many screen shots that I can't read through the 10DPI they printed it at. Oh well, back it goes, I try to find the author's blog/twitter posts to let them know Amazon is printing crap for them and thats probably why they get so many returned book refunds.

It used to be a decent place to buy commodity items such as cleaning products, but lately everything is jacked way up in price to get you the "free" shipping. A $3 product is now $18, so they can soak you on the "free" shipping because most people aren't going to question the price, they see, they buy.

Here’s my Amazon purchase count by year. Each * is 5 items, nearest neighbor rounding. I’m not a big consumer, I peaked at buying a few items every month in 2016, then scaled back and haven’t bought anything in 2022.

  2009 
  2010 
  2011 *
  2012 ***
  2013 ***
  2014 ****
  2015 ****
  2016 ******
  2017 ***
  2018 ***
  2019 ***
  2020 *
  2021 **
  2022 

The reason, I think, is that there’s just too much crap to sort through. I’ve gone through the dance a few times where I want to buy something so I check Amazon, and the results are all overpriced junk, then after about an hour of comparing items and scanning reviews to understand the problems with the junk I give up. It’s no surprise, but I’ve replaced Amazon with box stores and ordering directly from businesses online.

There's a number of things you 100% can't buy without a huge risk of scammers - things not too hard to fake, with big markups. Beauty and hair products in particular are really risky.

You know who I've really lost confidence in? Etsy. It used to be a great place to find hand-made, high quality items. A few months back I searched for a nice Turkish coffee set and was met with 40 listings of the exact same low-quality ali express item. Their revenue has soared recently, but at the cost of flooding their market with junk.

I've never used Amazon because when it got popular I realized the flaws in it already.

1. The buybox is disabled for traders that have different prices on other platforms. But: other platforms are way(!!!) cheaper than Amazon when it comes to fees.

2. Negative reviews magically disappear. Tried to prove a point by scraping some traders regularly that bid on the top related keywords but nobody cares at Amazon.

3. The search is messed up. There is no way to search what you are searching for. You always get spoofed with totally unrelated Chinese crap from Aliexpress. Even the keywords for brands are spoofed so much and they don't care about anything regarding trademark law.

4. Amazon Basics basically copying 1:1 existing items without any repercussion of trademark violations and/or design patents. There's lots of documentaries about it, how Amazon systematically pushes out and copies brands that are the best in their sector.

So yeah, in Europe I'm glad I have an alternative when it comes to electronics and house hold stuff [1] and for everything else I am basically trying to never buy on Amazon.

For some things there's websites like banggood and others which feel kind of like forefronts of aliexpress, basically. When I need electronics stuff from China, I'm using those...but it's very rarely.

I am never buying clothes on Amazon. Not kidding you, already had radioactive metal in a package, alerted customs (German Zoll) and others. Nothing happened.

[1] https://geizhals.de (German price comparison/scraping platform)

Amazon is a convenience store at this point, you aren't interested in the best prices or highest quality products, but the convenience of having something you want delivered to your door within x days (2 if prime).

For me there's sort of a spectrum from (1) "I want exactly this name brand X" to (2) "I need something cheap that does X". Amazon used to pretty comfortably cover both of those scenarios, but lately I've been leaning more and more towards ordering direct from the OEM for (1), or from Ebay/Alibaba for (2). Amazon still occupies some space in between, but it's narrowing.

I'll only buy cheap crap on there anymore, when alternatives are slightly more expensive cheap crap in stores. So I basically treat them as an online Harbor Freight of sorts. I don't trust the brand as a whole anymore.

For me, Walmart kills them. Generally better quality, trusted brands that probably won't burn my house down, and they'll bring it to my house from the store today. Or 2 day ship it if it's not there. And I can get groceries.

I recently bought ~$2000 worth of various purchases due to moving into a new home, furniture, home goods, food, etc.

Not a single bad experience, although I did spend a bit more time than I would have preferred looking through product reviews.

Can someone point me to a search term that turns up counterfeit goods? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because I hear this complaint all the time, yet have never seemingly encountered it in my 20+ years of using Amazon. I'd be curious to see what they look like.

Giving the benefit of the doubt, I feel I must be buying different things?

I did once however report that a power strip I had bought, knowing ahead of time it was super cheap, was designed in such a way that you could touch the live power pins because it was rounded and that I had shocked myself. That report seems to have gone nowhere

I have bought dozens of products on Amazon in the past 12 months, including a standing desk, health supplements,computer equipment, coffee-making equipment, coffee (itself), clothing, an anti-snoring device (MAD), and home exercise equipment -- among many other products.

I have only had one bad experience and that was because the item wasn't packed properly. Two things I do, however, to put the odds in my favor: I stay away from any product with tons of 5-star reviews with little relevant text content (fake astroturfing) and I do most of my product research elsewhere on the web.

I lost all confidence in them when it became clear that they actively supported fake reviews and counterfeit products. I have to imagine that the only reason some major lawsuit hasn't been brought against them is because federal counterfeiting measures are handled across half a dozen different agencies:

https://www.stopfakes.gov/Reporting-an-Online-Vendor-Selling...

Amazon is great for random stuff that is <$25 and you don’t put close to/in/around your body/food. I.e. if you need some calculator batteries or a book, great - you’re insane to risk you or your family’s health buying food/personal care/kitchen products/toys that are counterfeit/potentially toxic on Amazon

IME, the two things that Amazon beats everyone else at is - the shipping speed (logistics) and customer service / returns.

It's extremely convenient to be able to order with same day shipping, and the return policy (and returns process) is superior to everyone.

If theres a chance I might need to return something I rather buy it from Amazon, as going into a store and waiting in line is not worth the cost savings.

Hasnt been good value for a while now. Shop around and you can always pick up a better deal. What Amazon sells now are mainly no name chinese brands of dubious quality and reliability. They're making plenty of room for other retailer to come in and snap up their market share.

For a perspective from within Mainland China — you’d expect these problems to be 10x worse there, but they’re largely solved for most items (on Taobao, JD, and Pinduoduo):

- you can return almost any purchase within 7 days of receiving it, without any reason or excuse, usually with free shipping

- logistics and payments are extremely efficient and low-overhead, meaning everyone is ordering a bunch of options, receiving them within 1-2-3 days, and returning all but one or all, the system is handling this well

- margins are low, competition is crazy, search is AI/image-based, meaning you almost always get an amazing deal, 3x-10x cheaper in nominal terms vs same product on Amazon

- the way Alipay works on Taobao, most consumers are allowed to defer payment until they received an item and decided to keep it, no credit card needed

This only fails with products where it’s difficult to verify the quality yourself and the downside risks are high - most famously baby formula - then you just buy from official brand stores at high markup.

Recently I tried buying some shoes from somewhere that wasn't Amazon. My order never arrived and I never heard anything from them. To get a response I had to call their 1-800 number. "Oh yeah, it looks like that shipment has been delayed. I'm not seeing any estimated arrival date. Would you like to try ordering them in a different color?" Then I had to read my credit card number over the phone to get a refund.

Amazon has problems but in my experience their competitors are worse.

I will do anything possible to avoid ordering from Amazon, including paying more to buy it from someone else

previously I was a prime customer for nearly a decade, but in the space of a week I had two deliveries ruined by their terrible delivery agents (and they blamed me) and repeated harassment from a seller for posting a review that they solicited

No. Today one of the tines broke on my tiller, weld sheared clean off. Have had this tiller for years and use several times a year. I used some sites to find diagrams and part numbers. I was ready to order from the small engine site, $60 plus shipping and several day delay. I googled the part number, first link was an amazon prime next day delivery for $56. Maybe tomorrow it will show up and it will be a counterfeit and I will start the journey of losing confidence, but not today as I have never received a known counterfeit from them and we order at least 100 things or more from them a year.

Edit: like another reviewer, I really only purchase name brand items and mosty from amazon.com reseller. My last amazon purchase from a non-amazon reseller was fine, ramset 1 7/8" pins that I could not find anywhere else, for fastening 2x4s to a steel I-beam.

I ditched prime and haven't looked back. Amazon treats their workers and their customers as disposable.

It's surprisingly easy to cut them out in a lot of markets and just shop somewhere else. I assume anything I buy from Amazon won't be genuine, and only buy things there that I don't mind being knock offs.

Rule #1: Always buy from the official brand store on Amazon: e.g., only buy Makita products from the Makita Amazon shop; another example: Cuisinart, or Klein, or Fluke.

Rule #2: Buy books from Powells.com

Rule #3: Only buy things that cost Rule #4: Buy less stuff.

I buy stuff from Amazon several times per week. There are whole swaths of items I won’t buy on there though - anything food related or personal care for two examples.

I’ve had too many incidents of improperly handled or expired food being sent to me or outright fake / gray market things.

It’s hard to lose confidence in a company overall though with such an amazingly easy and liberal return policy.

I'm gravitating more and more to using Walmart.com as a first stop. They seem to be ramping inventory way up, their site--especially search--is a pleasure to use compared to Amazon, and shipping is a minor differentiator, if any.

For books, I always check bookfinder before ordering from Amazon.

But if you get a funky product on Amazon, I would think that returning it would be a fine way of registering disapproval. It can't be that good for Amazon, and you can bet they're noticing both the product and the vendor when it happens.

Which? over in the UK has been tracking this issue for a while now, recent articles:

a) Highlighting how some "Amazon Choice" products have scored really low when actually tested (due to fake reviews) - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/amazon-tech-with-fake-r...

b) Buying fake reviews linked to facebook accounts - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/how-facebook-fuels-amaz...

c) Though in the interests of posting counter argument, allegedly Amazon are making some efforts here - https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/amazon-takes-legal-acti...

Personally I try to avoid using Amazon nowadays and buy direct, but previously I've had a least one occasion where I've been asked to leave a 5* review in exchange for a free accessory and we've seen really top notch ripoffs (headphones) that were practically indistinguishable from the originals (did a side by side comparison).

Might want to try adding the “Fakespot Fake Amazon Reviews and eBay Sellers” extension to your browser. Certainly doesn’t solve the problems you’ve mentioned, but helps somewhat.

I wonder, for a massive company like amazon, where the equilibrium point is between proper and honest products and transactions and scammy fraudulent counterfeit crap -- from a profit viewpoint. Too much of the former and they miss out on some easy money, too much of the latter and people start using other online retailers.

From the comments here, and my own personal experiences, it looks like that line is a lot further into scam territory then I would have thought.

Not really. At least in my experience, their customer service is great and that means a lot more to me than the occasional fake product or reviews.

I've gotten wrong/missing deliveries, account issues/mishaps (caused by me in some cases), and other issues that customer service was able to quickly and promptly resolve.

The service is so convenient for the end user. While consciously minding all the other un-cool things Amazon does, their customer service is really good.

When I buy anything from Amazon I haven't bought before, I always check 3 star reviews first. Then I go through a few 1-2 stars. I might check one 4-5 stars but usually I treat them all as fake at this stage.

You're spot on IMO - it's an unregulated bazaar and a scammer's paradise. I gave up buying there about a year ago.

I hate Amazon until I try to use anything else. I hate the ads in search, that is not what search means to me. If I search 5.11 pants and buy the first thing I see, I won't get 5.11 pants. It feels like the cheap Chinese brand for anything I buy.

That being said, every non Amazon online order I place reminds me that they are the best we have.

Amazon is now basically a swap meet and has too many counterfeit products and products of dubious quality. I hate it now!

Amazon is no longer cheapest for most things I want, and as e-commerce has matured, most retailers do as good a job on the fulfillment side. Amazon uses crappy shippers so their shipping edge has evaporated such that the only lost or erroneous shipments I have had in the last 18 months were from amazon.

I still buy tons of things from there, but usually only if it's sold by Amazon.com specifically or the known manufacturer selling there. And if I can find it through Target, it'll get here almost as fast with free shipping, from a company with stronger values, so I prefer that when possible.

The other day I ordered two rolling storage drawers from a brand called "Homz" off Amazon. Just today got a notification that my package from Walmart was delivered and upon opening they were Sterilite brand. Not mad, but just a little weird to think sellers label themselves as one brand, sell another, and potentially essentially use Walmart as a dropshipping service.

That aside, I agree on your point on reviews, but additionally lost confidence in their pricing of prime/next day products compared to non prime products. In many cases, it seems that they've just built into the products price the price of shipping and label it as "prime"/free shipping

It's gotten pretty bad. I've reverted to buying only products where I know exactly what I'm getting (hard to make a counterfeit Ring alarm system). Otherwise, I'll get it somewhere else. Just too many shitty counterfeit products.

Yeah I actually prefer to buy more and more stuff from brick and mortar major retailers.

Fora long time now I’ve been using Amazon as a product search site with reviews (sometimes questionable). when I find the product I want to purchase, I try to purchase from the OEM, though sometimes they just direct me back to Amazon

My account was repeatedly used to leave fake reviews on products I never bought.

I always had 2FA and strong password.

I tried to reach out to Amazon as a well as standard procedures for this kind of situztion, but faced only generic responses. Tried to recreate an account, the problem did not stop. Google results told me I was not alone stuck with this kind of experience.

I definitely closed my account, said farewell to my Kindle library and only use my spouse account when I need to buy some electronics for which Amazon provide a stellar customer service around here.

So yeah, Amazon lost me and I have zero confidence in the security of the platform and the legitimity of the reviews.

After reversing the third credit card charge because the seller sent me a counterfeit and did not reply after that, yeah confidence was definitely lost, and this was hardly recently. I remove Amazon results from all searches when I’m trying to buy something. I completely ignore that website altogether for everything. The only thing I do use it for is Kindle content. Even physical books often arrive to me damaged, despite being bought new. Sometimes they don’t even pack it with any padding in the box and it’s just sitting there moving all over the place in transit, arriving with a bent cover.

Sorta mixed. I buy a huge amount though, so some misses are to be expected.

Amazon warehouse open box stuff - I've had some fraud issues with that. Shitty people buying another copy of an old broken item and returning the bad one and keeping the new working one. Then the next customer (me) trying to keep stuff off the landfill gets a broken item as "Like new".

SD cards...haven't had any proper fake ones but some have had suspiciously short lifespans.

Bought a incredibly unsafe cheap rice cooker that I used exactly once.

No immediate plans to switch to something else. It is still the most convenient/cheap frankly even with the misses

While I agree with all the issues you brought up, Amazon is still so much better than anything else that I hate having to go outside of Amazon to purchase something online.

To me the Amazon search box feels like the GPT-3 of matter. I can imagine a thing that I’m not even sure exists, I can type a description of it into the search box, and then have that object in my hands within 24 hours.

I agree with your criticisms and I hope that Amazon solves them very soon. But none of that makes me not want to use Amazon as my first stop for shopping.

I have never had bad service and everything always came ahead of schedule. Maybe it's your drivers not Amazon. They have the most efficient shipping system there is. It works fine by me. If I've ever had a problem they have always fixed it. Even the Messenger system they have is extremely polite and very courteous. This is a personal issue not a hit piece. This woke nation is extremely rude and Amazon and all Amazon AI systems and employees and drivers you're an amazing company I completely appreciate you and all you provide. This company is so helpful for ones that can't leave their house. Some people actually appreciate even the little things. They could disappear overnight. Being awake amidst the woke nation. The reason these companies are being bought out. With such a great service maybe they need better clients. Ones that are grateful. These driver's work even on the weekend. Show a Little respect it goes a long way. People are so rude lately. Maybe a reality check is necessary. These companies profile is and could delete your file. Due to the Patriot Act we are all being monitored and recorded at all times. Be the solution not the problem. Thank you everyone at Amazon all of your satellite systems towers devices that let us all communicate with one another.

Frankly, I try to avoid shopping on Amazon. One because of the problem you mention, but also because it's a poor deal for underlying businesses. Amazon eats most of the margin, while the underlying small businesses get the short end of the stick. Most of the time I find I can get the same items locally for the same price, and the small business simply gets a better margin. Sometimes I wonder if this disparity contributes to the scam problems.

Last weekend I was talking with a neighbor's friend about headsets and he let me try out his AfterShokz OpenComm. These are bone conduction headphones with a swivel microphone. He said he liked listening to music on them. I didn't like the audio quality for music, but it seemed like it would be plenty good for voice conferencing. What I wanted to know, though, was the microphone quality.

So I found them on Amazon and there are some video reviews!

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B09CGYBZVG/

One of the video reviews is titled "Love the battery life and microphone abilities". I thought, "great, I will get to hear what the microphone sounds like."

No such luck. The video reviewer is some doofus who wears an orange flame wig - I guess it's his trademark schtick? - and at no point does he actually demonstrate the microphone quality. He did talk a lot about how good the microphone is - without letting me actually hear it - and also commented on how the headset gets caught in his wig.

Dude! Why would I care about that?

So I did a search for "opencomm microphone quality" and landed on this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRmTMpZVoVc

Now this is what I was looking for. Not only does he let you hear the microphone, but he switches back and forth between the high-quality camera mic and the OpenComm mic, with a supertitle showing which you are listening to. And they throw in noise sources like a blender and a fan so you can check out the noise cancellation. Not a worry for me, I have a quiet private office, but gosh, I love this kind of demo.

So naturally I ordered from them instead of Amazon. And I did something I never do: I bought their extended warranty. I take good care of my equipment, and on a $150-$200 purchase, I'd rather just take the minor risk of having to buy a new one. But I paid for the extended warranty just as a way to thank them for providing such an informative video review.

If you make video reviews and want to see the difference between a ridiculously bad one and a great one, compare the two above.

Spot on. I’ve found the same — used to be I could get things I couldn’t get elsewhere or could get things for a lower price. Now there’s so much junk.

I've been avoiding buying anything from Amazon, not because of the reasons you listed but because of the horrific things I've heard about their WLB (not only white collar but the warehouse workers specifically). That and also I like supporting brick and mortar stores locally so they don't go out of business and so I can see things before buying them

I believe the FBA program exists so that Amazon does not seem like a monopoly, as anybody can sell there.. And so, it would seem they have very little interest in policing it..

I personally got my money back many times when issues came up, so to them it’s probably along the lines of “let sellers do their things and be quick to refund if customers complain..”

is this tradeoff worth it? Hard to say..

All I want from Amazon, the most profitable company in the history of the US, is to let me filter by American-made products.

Yep, for years now. Amazon used to feel amazing, now it's Scamazon and it's sadly better to buy the literal cheap garbage at Walmart than it is to waste the time researching the fake crap on Scamazon and still losing out.

It's really pushed me to waste 25 minutes driving across town for something that may be in stock and may do the job in most cases.

I’ve received one item I could tell was fake out of the thousands of items I’ve bought off Amazon. I guess if the fake pair of shoes looks and feels and lasts as good as the legit one why would I even care? They’re both made by child laborers in bad conditions overseas anyways, it’s not like name brands are made by skilled professionals here.

It has gotten so bad that I now actively seek out BestBuy or other places which I know will source out decent quality items.

I lost it ages ago, I've heard too many stories like this. Amazon broke itself in the pursuit of profit.

I use amazon, I don't really like amazon, but I do respect the logistics network they built. They really showed everyone else how it should be done and they seem to keep improving.

That being said, the biggest problem with Amazon is their contract to sell on their site has clauses in it that force you to give amazon the lowest price you sell for elsewhere. Since amazon has very unreasonable fees for selling on their site (that keep getting worse), this basically forces a price hike everywhere because a seller can't afford to miss out on the large volume of amazon and stops any other place from pulling an amazon on amazon itself and outcompete them on price until they have large market share. These kind of contracts should really be illegal, or at least limited to net of site fees.

Bought a raspberry pi power supply off Amazon that literally exploded after a couple of months. No way to return it because it was outside the return window, which I’m pretty sure is illegal (product was not fit for purpose/merchantable)

Didn’t bother fighting it but will never buy from Amazon again!

I've went thru the same problems. Posted a negative review and they scolded me in a message and refused to post the bad review I too was trying to warn others. I've ordered things from the app and received the wrong items with no way to submit the problem to Amazon. Never receiving items I ordered the app will say running late after never receiving the item I inform Amazon to issue a refund I get my refund than they all of a sudden send the item and recharge me after I receive my refund. You can only talk to a computer with questions designed by Amazon you cannot write your own you pick from a few they have listed. I don't know what's going on with Amazon but it's not good. I've went back to shopping with Walmart.

I no longer use Amazon for clothing, toys, cooking or kitchen products, furniture, or other categories full of toxic products.

In those categories, the Amazon's choice is likely a product that will be toxic that it will shorten your life by 20 years.

Amazon needs a "report hazardous product" button.

I agree on the problem with reviews, but I've yet to have enough bad experiences with the purchased product that I would stop using Amazon on that basis.

The only crummy product I remember getting was that time I ordered a HEPA filter and it was obviously a situation where some low-life put their used one in the box, returned it, and for some reason Amazon thought it was good as new and shipped it to me. Imagine the look on my face when I open the box to find a dirty filter covered in someone else's dust and hair. :/

Overall, I get exactly what I ordered from Amazon and at lightning speed. But I'm also very, very skeptical of all the reviews and usually put in my due diligence before buying anything over $10.

I stopped buying from Amazon years ago and haven’t noticed a drop in my quality of life. You can get 2-day shipping on many eBay purchases (brand new buy-it-now same as Amazon). It’s also nice to be able to shop based on seller location if you want to shop locally (which I try to, even for online purchases). Never used Prime Video or Audible or Kindle so I lost nothing giving those up, YMMV. Have never been ripped off buying through eBay but maybe I’ve just been lucky.

Also, I am quite happy to get out of the house and pick something up from one of the many retail businesses near me. This may not be the case for everyone but I don’t mind doing my own delivery most of the time.

I often see comments like these but I use Amazon a lot (I live an hour away from town) but have never experienced any issues related to the product (occasionally shipping issues). Maybe only certain product categories have this fakery?

So, how about we all start using this thread to list alternatives? That is the problem for me. I agree with this post completely but finding good alternatives is really difficult. It doesn’t feel like there are any.

I stopped because they banned me, I regularly posted, and even tested potential scam, what did I get from it, Amazon accuse me of abusing their returns system after I had probably 30 or 40 A to Z claims over scammers that never delivered something, or I documented in photos them sending other b**** as a way to scam the system oh, and even when I appealed this to Amazon and show them documentation of many if not all of the sellers being banned from Amazon with very very poor service ratings of 0% satisfied or 100% - oh, they would not reinstate my account oh, f** Amazon

I personally avoid buying on Amazon now if possible.

I still have Prime so occasionally I buy something, but the shipping is rarely 2-day anymore. I’m surprised when it actually arrives in 2 days.

Anecdotally, when browsing I often see many items that look to be exact rebranded duplicates (i.e. cheap headphones) of each other, from companies I’ve never heard of.

I’m not against a cheap and low-quality item that is good enough - they are perfect for me. But it’s been years since I trusted the reviews on Amazon, and it’s nice to have items that last and maybe create less waste. I’ve heard of counterfeit items as well, although haven’t encountered any myself. And increasingly the prices aren’t better on Amazon than elsewhere.

So many items are made in China. Not a problem outright, and not unique to Amazon or even caused by Amazon. But it’s non-obvious where an item is made. Usually there’s a Q&A where a user responds with where it’s made, but not always. I am looking for a moka pot, and it turns out the classic Bialetti moka pots are not all made in Italy but maybe certain sizes of certain models are, and it’s extremely difficult to get information on specific styles/sizes of a product with the way reviews for all styles/sizes are mushed together, especially when reviews for OLDER models are still included on product pages for new models. I opted to grab a moka pot in person at Target on my next visit since they have one in store. A while ago, I bought a nice Zojirushi rice cooker from Amazon and looked for one made in Japan. Luckily, the brand clearly stamps “Made in Japan” on the front of the machine when that is the case. It was probably a 20%(?) premium for that stamp, and I wonder if it was worth it (so far so good).

Amazon shipping is still quite fast and the Amazon return/refund policy is still great, as far as I know. I like the option to return items to Amazon through Kohls, although you can’t return all items through Kohls.

But other stores have good return policies as well. Target and Best Buy both have good shipping, store pickup, and curbside pickup options, and with easy returns in my experience. They both have a decent catalog of online only items, and good information on which stores have which products in stock.

Yeah - in the past two weeks, shipping to a major metro area, not one, not two, but three orders ended up "Running Late". One of the items was a $180 AirPods Pro, which I ended up never receiving and getting a refund for. The other two are several days beyond the estimate. This is totally new - I've only had this happen once before, and it makes me wonder whether there's been a rapid rise in Amazon supply chain theft going on.

(Grabbed the AirPods for the same price from Costco while Amazon figures out what on earth is going on...)

Email I just received from Amazon:

Hello,

We noticed that you have requested multiple returns in the last few months, and some of the items that you returned were not received in their original condition. Items are considered as not in their original condition when they are damaged, have obvious signs of use, missing parts, or not cased in the packaging they came in.

We would like to know how we can better support your shopping experience. Please reply to this email so we can understand any problems that you may be having with your orders or with the ordering process on Amazon.co.uk.

I guess somebody important has a bonus tied to Amazon Music usage. Not that long ago, you could just buy an MP3 off Amazon. Now it takes you to the Amazon Music player (which is slow to load) and if the song isn't available on Amazon Music, instead of playing a 30 second sample it will play similar song instead. If you want to buy the MP3, you have to click on Purchase options menu to get to the old digital music listing.

And another thing is the auto-playing video reviews on the front page. No thanks.

Totally agree, had tons of bad experiences with Amazon. If all goes well you'll get a working low quality item.

My checklist is: 1. Check the item on all AliExpress 2. If you think your country will steal some money at customs, factor that in (for small cheap items you should be fine) / consider whether you're happy to wait a few weeks 3. Check eBay for new items 4. Check local stores 5. Check Amazon and try to put enough daily crap (toothpaste, protein bars, whatever) to reach free shipping

I stopped using Amazon for most purchases after they sent me a "new" item that was very obviously used and came in a used sandwich bag that still had crumbs in it.

Amazon is now a collection of businesses, including:

- AWS - Amazon Ads - FBA - Marketplace

This is in order of profitability. It seems that Amazon doesn't care much about the Marketplace itself.

Amazon is my usual go-to market. The counterfeit problem, however, is why, when I needed replacement heads for my electric toothbrush, I considered buying a third-party alternative as opposed to the toothbrush maker's own. I figured that there probably wouldn't be counterfeits for the third-party brushes, but I might very well receive fake first-party heads.

(I ended up buying first-party heads, but not from Amazon.)

It might seem that reviews and ratings might be useful because they are the only feedback channel for customers, but I find them to be a more noisy signal compared to seller history and best seller rankings.

I think Amazon has exposed enough signals for me to set my expectations, it's just unfortunate that in recent years it takes a lot more time to consider those signals, and expectations tend to be low.

My experience has been deteriorating, too. I think the pandemic has caused much of this over the past couple of years, both from growth, from Amazon employees remote working, and general cost and productivity. That's not to say there wasn't prior deterioration. Some longer term factors are possibly Bezos retiring and sales tax reducing their advantage over physical stores.

Haven't ordered a thing from them in almost three years, Haven't been to a Whole Foods in quite a while, either. They are dead to me.

Only thing I like to buy from Amazon are ... books.

It sucks. It is no longer reliable. And the fake Chinese names of products is stupid. I don't buy anything you can't pronounce like a bunch of letters. HUTRDJK every product I search for in a name brand another fake name comes up. Don't even den get me started on Prime shipping and products. It is bad and Walmart is just as bad.

It sucks. It is no longer reliable. And the fake Chinese names of products is stupid. I don't buy anything you can't pronounce like a bunch of letters. HUTRDJK every product I search for in a name brand another fake name comes up. Don't even den get me started on Prime shipping and products. It is bad and Walmart is just as bad.

It sucks. It is no longer reliable. And the fake Chinese names of products is stupid. I don't buy anything you can't pronounce like a bunch of letters. HUTRDJK every product I search for in a name brand another fake name comes up. Don't even den get me started on Prime shipping and products. It is bad and Walmart is just as bad.

I tried to avoid Amazon because they don't need my money and you can find better quality or better deal elsewhere.

Amazon is becoming a Wish also.

For a few years now I refuse to buy anything on amazon that I consume or put on my body because of exactly those same concerns.

I deleted my entire account rather than do a tutorial someone put out for a large dataset you could host on Amazon, because I was so convinced that any computations not done on my personal device might be observed without my consent nor a warrant.

I have zero confidence in Amazon, they should have stuck to books or thought more than ten-ish years out.

I'm losing confidence in Amazon so much that I will complain about their service but not make any change to my behavior.

I've been a customer since 1996. Yes, for the books. Stopped being customer around 2017 when I noticed a significant markup on all Amazon items. Almost any item can be found cheaper at ebay, aliexpress or somewhere else. Haven't bought prime because I oppose to customer lock-ins and to monopolies in general.

My company gives me 1k/mo gift cards so i have to buy stuff i dont even need, so far hundreds of items no fakes that i could spot. I buy all types of stuff from all sections.

I did buy some jewlry as gift for 20€ that i later found on ali express for 50 cents but thats my bad i guess.

>I've done most of my shopping for the last 15 years on Amazon

What? How? This is genuinely baffling to me.

Wasn't most of the Amazon issue on fake items related to the UPC barcode issue they ran into with books? I recall they only stored the UPC code of items and pulled from their own stock or resellers (who had fake copies with the same code).

Just bought some scam USB sticks. I can return them, and leave a negative review, but there's no obvious place to file a report of an active scam.

Easy to find a place to report an IP violation, however, if I'm the company being infringed upon...

Same, I even got conned on stupid cleaning products (my bad, was carelessly clicking).

Internet made massive foggy blobs to become dependencies for us. It's right into our homes yet completely removed from our reach.. too large too immaterial.

No. Amazon is the last resort. After being denied a negative review and after having to pay with Mastercard in advance instead after delivery i only look at Amazon if i cannot find the product anywhere.

I did use Amazon a couple of times when it first arrived, but wasn't comfortable with its overreach in every area of operation, and have avoided it since. There are more equitable alternatives

I only buy from Amazon because I know I can return the items if I don't like them.

In some cases I even bought from Aliexpress because I couldn't be sure whether the item from Amazon was genuine or not.

I haven't experienced this yet, but then again, everything I search for is fairly popular, and I end up just picking the product with the most reviews after a cursory scan and comparison.

I’ve only had good experiences with their site and products sold on it. They do seem mixed up internally though. They’re probably going to have to treat their staff better and restructure.

Quit years ago. Their support is horrendously incompetent, and if I want to buy Chinese products I go to AliExpress directly. With their prices, not the adjusted ones.

Also free delivery, just 2 weeks.

I have never shopped for anything on Amazon. So many experiences, from what I have gathered, have been negative: damaged items, misleading, missing, etc. Walmart is better, imho.

Yes a lot of items u have bought have been broken and do not work so I send them back and look for the items here in town and have lost 2 days or more before I get it.

I'm in the boat. I buy from local stores and avoid Amazon

Many and more Amazon customers are now ordering items online from Walmart. Safe to say the customer service is going to be better. Even the shipping is excellent.

I once attempted to buy a laser for an EDM music art project on Amazon and wound up with something that is more or less intentionally down-marked as a less dangerous class of laser.

I only found out about it (and thus saved my retinas) because some ML or another decided to queue up a bunch of laser-related videos, and it just so happened that the video which surfaced in my feed went into how weapons enthusiasts were using Amazon, and this specific brand, to sell eyeball eaters to folks who like to melt pop cans in ravines at 100 yards or whatever.

Like, when I went back, there were literally laser marks on my apartment door from where I tried the laser out, after receiving it.

Amazon seems to be pursuing a sort of 'common-carrier' status for material goods, and it's a libertarian no-rules Snow Crash dystopia.

Nope! It’s awesome. I have never had any issues and have had great luck just going with whatever comes up listed as “Amazon’s Choice.”

I don’t think I’ve ever had confidence in Amazon - possibly because out side of the US they are simply lacking in almost all ways.

Jesus man, you should specify Amazon The Store. I was concerned HN had just realized all the issues with Amazon in total...

It might be time to replace reviews with something more objective, such as the number of sales vs number of returns.

Somehow and don't when this happened and still happening - The negative reviews are not getting approved (google, amz, etc.), the number of dislikes on youtube videos stopped showing, and even now if you dislike a video, it won't show (might be there is a bot or a algorithm that's checking some negative words, connotations and then its blocking the review altogether). It might be during the covid some time in 2020/2021 is when this started happening (or during Trump reign).

Past tense.

Current state is buyer beware, assume adversarial with all amazon and amazon-facilitated offerings.

I shop around more, but I pretty much get good stuff from Amazon multiple days a week.

There's room for an amazon competitor -- it would be really capital intensive.

Is this a US thing? I shop at European Amazon sites maybe once or twice a year, certainly never look for everyday items.

Yeah the search is garbage but I've been hearing about fakes for years and struggle to comprehend how is this allowed to continue. Is it mostly cheap items, or do they also allow expensive fakes?

I rarely buy from Amazon.com... Usually eBay.com, aliexpress.com and Walmart.com

It’s as good as it always was for me. I buy from the German one.

Yes, but not as much as I lost confidence in Wish.com

I've never experienced that. I have never noticed fake products and have never had a single issue with shipping. Maybe the categories I search are special in some way?

All marketplaces quickly turn to garbage.

It is a huge marketplace, so I would expect there to be a few bad apples. Overall, I would say 70-80% of the stuff I buy does the job.

i was told emailing jeff@amazon.com fixes amazon. tried?

I order from Amazon every week and have never had an issue. Not sure what’s different between my experience, or order item selection. (shrug)

Maybe you're searching for, or selecting and purchasing, the wrong items?

I'm honestly baffled someone could be "losing confidence in Amazon" in 2022. Sorry for the expression but like, where the f** have you been? I thought everybody already knows how horrible Amazon is in its absolute, demonic entirety.

This company always felt wrong. Like a shitty bootleg toy shop. Like a shady back-alley dealer. Like a cheap Chinese (sorry, it's a popular pejorative here) scam site. Strewn with knock-offs, bootlegs, mass fake reviews, terrible customer service. Oh and the site always felt really, really off in UI and UX, it's still like that. Later in life I (unfortunately) became more aware of the world around me, became a programmer and so on. But my sentiment starts way earlier than AWS.

Here in Poland (born&living) it's Allegro that was always our Amazon & eBay. Was (and still is) above and beyond the Bezos-ian quality of service. I'm almost sure people still almost never use Amazon here. For the longest time we'd have to use amazon.de for buying stuff if you want it shipped to Poland. I think that's not the case anymore but yeah... uncanny.

BTW I wouldn't be surprised if AWS was the most popular of all services offered by Bezos Co. in Poland.