I’ve been noticing a lot of these trends on Amazon lately. Too many junk products, can’t trust the reviews…

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Why does it feel like the company is making itself worse?

https://nymag.com/intelligence...ng-itself-worse.html

This related link about e-commerce trends:


https://www.marketplacepulse.c...in-review-2022#china

Yes, Amazon is selling a lot of carp. It lost money and value last year.
Amazon losses
They are selling grey market products and counterfeit products IMO.

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I’ve been noticing a lot of these trends on Amazon lately. Too many junk products, can’t trust the reviews…

Yep, I've noticed this as well.

And those wacky names that are indeed just a string of letters.

Also, I became aware of the reach of AWS (Amazon Web Services) at some point when I learned that AWS provides the internet infrastructure for all kinds of online services, including university webpages and learning management systems.

It's a little freaky, and a little scary, how much depends on this one company.

I am trying to buy more from physical, local, stores, but it's hard when Amazon is so damn convenient and cheap...

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Originally posted by CHAS:
Yes, Amazon is selling a lot of carp. It lost money and value last year.
Amazon losses
They are selling grey market products and counterfeit products IMO.

100% agree. Their reviews are frequently spammy as well. I go on there for name brands only at this point, things that I know.

Counterfeits on Amazon, including Ove Gloves.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecu...which-ones-are-real/

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

I’ve been noticing a lot of these trends on Amazon lately. Too many junk products, can’t trust the reviews…

Yep, I've noticed this as well.

And those wacky names that are indeed just a string of letters.

Also, I became aware of the reach of AWS (Amazon Web Services) at some point when I learned that AWS provides the internet infrastructure for all kinds of online services, including university webpages and learning management systems.

It's a little freaky, and a little scary, how much depends on this one company.

I am trying to buy more from physical, local, stores, but it's hard when Amazon is so damn convenient and cheap...

AWS is what many (most??) companies are using, unless they have major security needs. Netflix and McDonald’s both use it, according to this article: https://www.mytechmag.com/companies-that-use-aws/

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AWS is what many (most??) companies are using, unless they have major security needs. Netflix and McDonald’s both use it, according to this article: https://www.mytechmag.com/companies-that-use-aws/

The more I think about this, the more I think we should all be freaking out about it.

I’m casually guessing perhaps half of startups rely on AWS, most without any backup plan for what to do if AWS disappears.

What’s frustrating about Amazon products is that so many of them are so crappy they wont work at all.

Boxes of screws that aren’t threaded. Missing pieces, sometimes several pieces. Items that were clearly damaged before they were packaged. Light bulbs that won’t screw in to a fixture. These things would be comical if they weren’t so common. I suppose it’s a logical extension of the race to the bottom and I should be happy the boxes have anything in them at all.

I’ve wondered about the stuff that I return. If I put an appropriately sized rock in the box and drop it off at Kohls, will anyone open it when it arrives at its destination? My guess is that return boxes are never opened and are instead sold in bulk to various liquidators. The items have no value and no one is going to spend time handling them.

As for search, these ideas from a commenter look useful. Google search tool isn’t very good either but it’s better than Amazon’s:

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I routinely use Google's site search for Amazon.com instead of Amazon search, so I nearly always find the lowest price item that most precisely matches my exact search term.

I also use Google Lens combined with site search to uncover all of the many private labelers on Amazon selling the exact same item.

It really doesn't take very long to upload Amazon stock photos to Google Lens and often yields 50% or as much 75% savings over what I would have paid had I bought from one of the sellers Amazon positioned in its first few pages of results.

If low price is the ultimate goal, sites like DHGate.com and Wish sell the same items without Amazon’s markup. Shipping takes a while and returns can be a problem but it’s all so cheap that if the stuff is no good you can just throw it away like spoiled produce. Most of the time what I get is the same or maybe better than what I might have bought at Amazon.

Here’s another article. It’s long but it covers concepts I’ve never heard of before.

The Enshittification of TikTok

I still use Amazon for many things and have not had issues with quality or fakes. Their return policy is generous and convenient. Pricing seems competitive.

Jf

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Originally posted by Steve Miller:
...My guess is that return boxes are never opened and are instead sold in bulk to various liquidators....

That sentence reminded me of an event when I was in high school. One day, one of the students carefully opened their vanilla ice cream cup and ate the contents. Then he refilled the cup with mashed potatoes and put the lid back on as if it had never been opened. You can imagine the uproar when someone got a cup of frozen mashed potatoes in their lunch a couple of days later.

Big Al

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Enshittification

That's a really good word.

Steve, re the returns issue: I read something recently (either WaPo or NYTs) that was about returns, and the impression I got was that some items are most definitely checked and returned to be sold again, but others do indeed just get passed along.

I can't find the article now, but if I do, I'll link it here.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
Here’s another article. It’s long but it covers concepts I’ve never heard of before.

The Enshittification of TikTok

Ok, I read that article.



The internet is screwed. And we are screwed with it.

Also, reading that article, I could almost hear the author furiously typing it out to the sounds of Nine Inch Nails....

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
What’s frustrating about Amazon products is that so many of them are so crappy they wont work at all.

Boxes of screws that aren’t threaded. Missing pieces, sometimes several pieces. Items that were clearly damaged before they were packaged. Light bulbs that won’t screw in to a fixture. These things would be comical if they weren’t so common. I suppose it’s a logical extension of the race to the bottom and I should be happy the boxes have anything in them at all.

And Amazon (and Walmart) have driven a lot of local businesses out of business. There's one decent hardware store left around here and it's almost 10 miles away. Computer retailers. Good shoe stores. Pet supply stores. Camping and outdoor stores. You name it. A lot of small mom-'n'-pop businesses can't compete with Amazon and they've just plain closed.

So, if you need a box of good quality screws that have a real thread cut into them instead of stamped on to pot metal, you're kinda screwed, as it were.


Then we have the Amazon-induced whiplash in our housing market and property taxes in this area. It's crazy-making.

I used to buy some stuff off Amazon that I couldn't find locally. I typically returned about half the stuff I bought because it was not-as-advertised or arrived damaged (I got one pet-feeder replaced three times and each one was damaged just like the rest, and the box was pristine, so clearly they had a bunch of them in the warehouse that were all broken the same way).

Now, I will not buy anything from Amazon. Never again. Their business practices are bad. Their treatment of their employees is beyond bad. And they destroy communities. Nope. Not doing it.

I have no idea how to determine if a company uses AWS, and it's probably impossible to live now without doing business with companies that do.

We used to have anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws in this country. Or at least that's what we were told.