Is amazon broken for anyone else?

I don’t shop all that often, but when I do, it’s not a great experience.

Sponsored ads rule Amazon along with irrelevant search results. The clutter of options and the overwhelming amount of choices often lead me down a rabbit hole of reviews and comparisons, increasing the time to buy.

And it's not just Amazon. Whether it's electronics on Best Buy, clothes on various e-commerce platforms, or groceries on Instacart, the problem persists: a flood of options, inconsistent pricing, and a lack of personalized recommendations that understand my needs and preferences.

And now there’s the rise of influencer + social media shopping, where people follow an influencer and trust their recommendations and buy their product lines. While this trend does offer a new avenue for product discovery and selection, I find myself hesitant, lacking a trusted influencer whose recommendations align perfectly with my purchasing decisions.

But even with all the complexity of online shopping, I think it ultimately boils down to 3 steps.

1) Research what to buy - this can happen by brute force reading many product listings or by going on other sites like Reddit, Wirecutter, ect.

2) Then, compare options across different platforms, a step eaten into by sites like Amazon, who not only compete with but undercut independent merchants by offering their own products at lower prices.

3) Settle on one and buy

I wanted to build something that I could trust to get me to step 3 faster, while still doing all of the research and cross-platform product comparison, which take up the lion’s share of time. That’s why I built Claros: https://claros.so/, my attempt at solving this problem and building an AI shopping assistant that can help me buy the random purchases that accrue from living life.

Now, my ramble ends and I find myself back to the original question: how do you shop online? Would Claros help you? If not, how can I make it better?

thanks