I agree, returns are where amazon crushes it. I feel like there should be some startup just focusing on making the perfect returns product for small brands. Just do anything including at home pickup and then figure out how to optimize later.

The one issue here is that to achieve this result and make the customer king (or spoiled child, you choose), they exploit and abuse absolutely everyone else, people and partners.

I was floored the other day doing an Amazon return. It was a rented office space, with just a window where you drop off your item to a clerk. I peeked inside it was floor to ceiling packages and toys and items. And there was a line behind me.

The sheer logistics and human will that made that possible is crazy to me.

Extrapolate to multiple locations in Miami alone. Then Florida. Then East Coast. Then USA. Then Europe. Global locations.

Who is in charge of all this? How do they keep track of all this? How do they identify a tiny little podunk location is fucking up and how do they find someone they can trust to run it?

It's crazy! Think about it next time you return something to Amazon.

Just bear in mind that if they don't like how often you return or the circumstances, they will issue you a sudden lifetime ban

But also if you go to support chat (not via the order details, which often rejects attempts at getting support) via the site footer, and escalate to an agent, you can tell them you don't have a post office that's easy to get to for you and don't drive etc. and they will just issue you a refund (if it's a quality problem). Done this many times when the product was damaged.

Personally I’m happy to pay 20% extra elsewhere just to know that Bezos is not getting any of my money.

But I’m weird like that; I also think ordering everything online is inherently immoral (provided you are an able bodied person living in a city)

> Got a dud? Quality not as expected? Ordered two by mistake? Size is not fitting?

I totally agree, but I find the quality of the items I get off of Amazon to generally be a lot less than other places I chose to shop. Likely due to the fact that I intentionally shop on other sites for specific products but on Amazon I get things that just aren't necessary for me so I spend less time curating the purchases.

I had to return iSpring RO system bought through their official portal. It came as a shock to me that I had to pay for shipment that was 70% of the contents value. IMO that's the way to discourage returns.

Much better that nearest post office. Take it to the nearest whole foods and don't even bother with the box.

> And then return...

My little experience with Amazon is that quality assurance has been moved to the customer. It is on you to see that a product is wrong/not what you wanted.

> At this point, I'm happy to pay 10% extra just to buy from Amazon.

As the article states, you are paying more than 10% extra because Amazon. And everybody else too.

Yeah, returning ends up being the clencher for me for a lot of Amazon stuff.

If I think there's basically no likelihood of me returning something, I'll sometimes shop elsewhere, but for anything where there's even a chance of me not liking it for whatever reason I will buy on Amazon now.

> Got a dud? Quality not as expected? Ordered two by mistake? Size is not fitting? Take it to nearest post office, scan a qr code and hand it over. Done.

I'd say this is probably a US privilege. Ive had some trouble returning items in india

i'm happy to pay a convenience fee to not have to set up an account to order from each individual store. having my address and payment info in one centralized superstore is way better than having it spread around dozens of niche businesses

As a long time Amazon customer I stopped Prime and stopped using the platform because all of those went downhill and unreliable as their prices went up - even after they opened a local warehouse in my same city limits

I used to feel this way about Amazon returns. Then a seller sent me the wrong item and Amazon rejected the return and re-charged me and I've been trying to get my money back for over a year. I do think it will only be one more phone call, but I have thought that with every phone call. It's less than $50 but it's ridiculous. It has happened before that a seller would send me the wrong thing, which isn't great, but at least they would refund me. They have made this experience so tedious and frustrating, I'm sick of it and have moved all my physical purchases elsewhere.

Eh, this seems to depend on the product and/or whether it was fulfilled by Amazon? In the last year we had to ship articles 3 times to Slovakia, 2 of them being lost along the way. It was also a “you pay for your own return and we’ll reimburse you 8€” thing, which is not the cost of shipping items to Slovakia. What’s up?

The tradeoff for consumers is that convenient returns are cheaper to implement than quality control.

Sure except that I got a defective product and could only return it or exchange for something different... What a joke.

Besides Amazon's own faults the rest of the return process is actually good.

Still all paid for by high prices on EVERY purchase

Except you don’t have the choice to “pay 10% extra just to buy from Amazon”. Amazon force sellers to set not-lower price everywhere else.

The flip side to this is I've on multiple occasions had Amazon ship me clearly used shit resold as new — Amazon.com was the seller.

One even came with a sticker: "Thanks for giving this product a second life!"

The worst of the worst among us use Amazon as a try-before-you-buy or rental house. Their lax return policy encourages them.

If I buy anything important, especially expensive electronics, I buy it from somewhere else. If it's a reputable store with a strict return policy, I'm doubly sure there will be no fuckery.

That used to be the case until about a year ago, but isn't the case anymore at least here in Ireland. I'm taking them to small claims court because they closed my account without a refund on a legitimate return. Their customer support has gone from excellent to nearly nonexistent. Fortunately for me, I've kept all the receipts.

I distrust Amazon for anything over about £150 now. Which seems to coincide with their threshold for needing an OTP.

The last straw was getting a blood pressure monitor (which they don’t even sell) in place of £400 smart glasses. They insisted I returned the monitor, then said I failed to return the glasses. Took months for them to refund me.

Weird. I think I might have made three returns to Amazon in 30 years of ordering from them. I research the shit out of just about everything I buy, if I have to return something it's because I either got very cleverly scammed or had a literal stroke before I made the purchase.

The ease of returns was a huge factor in the early success of Walmart, as well. I worked there in high school and college (99-02 timeframe) and they harped on how much the customer was right for returns, unless it was just blatant fraud. if there was a chance the customer was not trying anything you just give them their money back

> 9 out of 10 people i ask this is the single reason they stay at Amazon.

9 out of 10 I ask say it's about reliable delivery (not necessarily next day). Most people order things because they need them and have read the reviews, not because they are speculating at something they may need or are ok with getting something else. Clothing being a notable exception, unpredictably sized and variable quality, which nobody is happy about.

I’ve only ever returned two things to Amazon: a counterfeit laptop battery (claimed to be an official part, had 30% lower capacity than labelled), and an unbearable replacement laptop keyboard (2KRO rather than the original’s NKRO, with horrific ghosting, a couple of keys that would stick if not pressed completely straight, and a space bar that had to be hit just so to activate at all). Neither of these products would have been available without Amazon, and that would have been a good thing.

They became big, cause they had their customers first. They were tough to negotiate good prices and put customer experience quite forward. Any complaint and they replaced stuff, not many questions asked.

They then invested heavily in logistics, so now they could replace their support to annoying bots and use their market position to increase their margin.

FYI, when someone else says "this is why I do this thing", you don't get to argue with that. You don't get to tell other people what their opinions are. Psycho.

In my experience, the customer-friendly return experience is withering. I ordered a small table about a year ago that didn't ship with the correct hardware. I literally could not assemble the thing as documented in the instructions.

I had to call to get a refund; admittedly, I think I may have been slightly outside the ordinary return window. The customer service representative was pretty reluctant to accept it, somewhat heavily suggesting that I didn't assemble it right.

I actually just recently cancelled my Amazon Prime, which I've had for probably 10+ years. Not solely based on this one experience, but a general decline in how much perceivable value I actually get out of it.

Personally, the only webshop where I actually need so many returns is Amazon itself.

Some of that is intrinsic to a good chunk of what they're selling (poorly described imports from the Chinese market). I just ordered an assortment of cabling for shuffling PCIe signals around. Apparently there are a few different "standards" for pinouts on SFF-8643 and SFF-8654, but nobody actually describes them in their product listings! So I'll see which ones work with what I already have, and with each other, and the rest can go back. Sellers could have avoided that by doing that work once and describing their items, but they'd rather I do it instead. So when I do it, I don't feel bad about the returns.

But a lot of it is the dark patterns Amazon themselves choose to play. Nonstop pricing games make me push my actual purchasing decisions down the line. If something is on sale at a great price and I'm in the market, I'll just hit buy to lock in that price. I'll then try to do some research before it ships, but in general I've got 30+ days to make the actual purchase decision. This is what the seller must want, right? Or the same pricing games but after a purchase - if the price on something significantly drops, the answer I've gotten from CS is to buy a new one and return the old one. So if I already have other stuff I need to make a return trip for, that's what I do!

Or when I'm in the middle of building/repairing something, especially when I don't have a "trial" of "prime" (aka sunk cost fallacy), I'll order a few different types of items I think I might need. This way when they show up in a week+ (Slow, Spiteful Shipping) and I'm back focusing on the project, there is less chance of "oh I really needed this other thing" and having to wait another round trip.

With other web stores I just don't feel these type of dark pattern dynamics. Whereas Amazon is practically begging people to call their bluffs. So I call them.

Most of the people I know would rank predictability is #1, price #2 and ability to do returns #3 (as a data point: I don't even remember last time I did a return, was years ago). Really depends on who your connections are and their specific needs I reckon.

>No-questions-asked returns

Different forms of marketing work on different people. This one works on me. I'm going to shop at Amazon and Costco because, in the very few instances where I want to return an item that didn't live up to its promise, I can do so without incurring penalties.

When this happens, I'm already frustrated. I assembled a floor lamp for far longer than an adult should spend assembling it, and it's wobbly as shit. A corporation than nickel-and-dimes me at this point will incur my irrational wrath. Canadian Tire (a big box retailer of mostly low-quality wares here in Canada) has lost my business over a decade ago because of this. I tell myself: most Canadians are meek sheep that will return after being told "well akshually you can't return this because technically blah blah", but I'm not a sucker, I won't shop here on principle.

A company that doesn't create this experience for me will get my business and exploit whatever other blind spots I have with their marketing, dark patterns, opaque pricing, etc, because they didn't piss me off when I was ready to walk away for good.

It's probably different for everyone. For us, it's chiefly because it's the only place where we can find a gazillion things our kids' school demands they bring to school, and we can have it in twenty-four hours without having to drive to the store.

I order books from a local indie bookstore and just wait a couple weeks for the books to show up from their wholesaler.

But for other stuff, including tools, why wouldn't I just order from a place I already have free 2-day (often overnight) shipping for, when my alternatives are physical big box stores? Like why go to Lowe's to buy a cross-cut jig when I can get it delivered right to my house in 24 hours for the same price? It's not even like my money could possibly go to an indie hardware store. They don't exist. Certainly not within an hour of me, which not only requires my time, but also money in the form of electricity to drive my car, plus the wear and tear on my car.

This is law in Europe. By that logic there would be no reason to use Amazon anywhere in the EU yet many people seem to use it.

This is a strawman. OP said " I shop at Amazon due to their logistics." Nothing in your post refutes why OP shops at Amazon.

> their competiton couldn't do without going out of business

Why? If I sell a quality product I have no fear of excess returns.

i'm the 10th person, we don't stay for returns. However, I am doing a lot more shopping on different websites nowadays as I see Amazon is the most expensive option.

> No-questions-asked returns

That's the Right of withdrawal[0] by EU law, though. Do you mean something else?

I mean, sure, smaller shops might not cover the costs for the return shipping, but I don't really mind.

[0]: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/ret...

Ehh, maybe for some people. I've almost never returned anything to Amazon, so for me the logistics is definitely the biggest factor.

[flagged]

I have never returned anything to amazon. Maybe it's a US culture thing.

So it's kinda like how credit cards charge the merchant a fee and in the past would disallow the merchant from offering a cash discount.

They are not allowed to do this in the country I live in.

And my point is that many of us aren't even shopping on price!

You could also flip around the reading to.. boohoo poor sellers have to raise their prices elsewhere and take higher margin?

Why don't they figure out how to ship/delivery more quickly with a competitor with all those extra margin dollars they are being forced by Amazon to take elsewhere?

The 3rd party sellers on Amazon are a mess. I’m in the US, and just waited 18 days to get the wrong item sent to me… some face lotion instead of a drone.

I picked it off someone’s wishlist, so didn’t really vet the seller. I thought I was being really proactive when I ordered, but now I will need to find an alternative at a local retail store, which will probably be difficult.

Last year at Christmas, my brother-in-law opened his gift to find a bunch of adult diapers. It was supposed to be a power tool.

Sure, Amazon takes the returns, but it’s still extremely disruptive when these things happen, and it’s happening more and more frequently.

In the outskirts of a college town with unusually bad retail (like the clothing stores at the mall are the Loft, Target and T-shirt express) 2 day shipping became 2 week shipping during the pandemic leading to me to quit Prime. It particularly bugged me because if I expect to get something in 2 days that's more convenient that making a trip to the store, but if it 5 days or more I'll be going to that sector anyway for another reason and it is easy -- it struck me as significantly dishonest that they were promising fast shipping and not delivering.

Maybe 2 years later I tried the free trial of Prime, if only to quiet the ads, and it was great... they must of extended their logistics network into my area and I get a lot of stuff in 1 day or 2 days now. I went through a phase of taking discounted or free Prime offers when I could but broke down and I've been maintaining a Prime subscription. It's probably not really worth it because my pattern is that I am typically heads down doing this or that and every other month or so I do a burst of buying stuff that I'd wanted for a while or I am doing some project that requires a lot of stuff. Then I might go a month and buy nothing on AMZN.

It certainly varies at least by country. I'm in London, and its very unusual to get worse than next day delivery except for marketplace sellers, and often <12 hours.

Of course it doesn't hold for FBA, if it's not FBA, then it's not Amazon's logistics.

I've noticed this lately in coastal California of all places. I needed batteries by Sunday morning, was ordering on a Thursday. Plenty of 1 or 2-day options when searching and adding to cart, then when it came time for checkout... none of the 5 options I tried could be delivered in 2 days!

It seemed the interface was designed to hide the true delivery estimate in the last step and trick me into thinking the item would arrive on time.

> I didn’t get any estimates until after purchase.

If they are not going to tell me the day it is going to arrive, I am not buying. Thats the "prime" reason for using Amazon these days.

It depends on the country. For the last few months here in Germany Amazon has been having major shipping issues

when I check out there is usually a button that says "as fast as possible" or "fewer delivery days" or "slower delivery for discount"

But that's just the basic physics of mail-order shopping, it isn't anything specific to Amazon.

Every general store in every town everywhere can't possibly stock millions of individual products. When some item has a potential customer base of a few tens of thousands of people in a country of hundreds of millions, most stores would never get a single sale for that item. But when you can serve the entire country at once via the mail, having a single centralized warehouse specializing in that niche category of items is quite viable.

The only difference with Amazon is that you are buying from a single website, rather than going to the website of a small webshop specializing in your flavour of niche items. And the drawback is that Amazon has zero quality control, so rather than a store where you can browse for known-good curated high-quality niche items you will instead be drowned by piles of absolute garbage - with the occasional decent item hidden in between.

Sure, Amazon might beat your local store, but that doesn't mean it is good for buying niche items.

I think Amazon might have induced this problem somewhat. Most retail stores have just stopped stocking niche items because people just buy them from amazon and it frees up a lot of floorspace they could use to stock high sales volume items instead.

Basically the only things I don't buy from Amazon is groceries and large kitchen appliances, and it's 90% due to the convenience.

Yep, I've always been a traveller of the long tail.

It’s extremely common for delivery drivers to pee in bottles. Have you ever driven delivery?

I remember a friend in the 90s excited about his job at UPS. He laughed about the pee bottle. Same for people I know who work for usps and fedex.

Kind of makes sense. Where do you expect someone to pee who is driving around for 10 hours a day.

Or having to continue to work while their dead co-workers are laying nearby under a blanket. Yikes.

I'm the same way. I've also been very impressed with Chinese made goods too. Especially in the music world, M-Vave recently released a very capable synth for $50 (FM-1) that is having a massive resurgence of tinking in the community (people are sly enough to use LLMs to vibe code different firmwares that turn the device into something else entirely, like a groovebox or drum machine for example).

It's a shame neoliberals hallowed out US manufacturing but at least consumers around the world are benefitting.

Speaking of erosion of trust Amazon does nothing to protect consumers and is fine putting peoples lives at risk. I have received multiple counterfeits from Amazon

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

Maybe it's regional, here in Baltimore it's still head and shoulders above.

I gave up and canceled my Prime subscription years ago after repeated failures to meet even a 2-day delivery promise. I never once got anything same-day. And the Video and other services of Prime were things I never used.

FWIW Prime also often delivers earlier than the set date (yes, even when it's set to next day...)

I assume they want to limit the amount of customer support more than advertising their logistics.

I'm not a Prime customer. I'd wager close to 50% of my orders arrive within 2 days. I'm glad Prime members are subsidizing this :-)

Even more shocking: I'm not an Amazon customer at all. Which, granted, is probably easier if you're outside the US.

For me, FedEx is almost always a day or two over the initial estimate, and the package looks like it's been routed through a war zone.

UPS is generally pretty good.

For me, this was a key reason I cancelled Prime.

In the 90s and 00s Amazon would fix things. The last time Amazon lost a “delivered” package they told me that they could do nothing about it. My ticket got escalated a few times and they offered a discount on ordering a replacement. I just did a chargeback with my credit card. I was frustrated with Amazon because I probably ordered 30 things a year for 10+ years and they trusted their driver over me saying I never got it.

This is not my experience. I had a package simply not arrive, and Amazon AI said it would replace the missing package (which was a high dollar value). Instead, it just repeated the order, double charging me. I had 3 conversations with human CS promising me they saw the mistake and would fix it, and never did, so I was double charged. After months trying to resolve it I eventually gave up and ate the cost.

I've never had such a poor experience, including being repeatedly lied to by CS, and this was the last straw for me. I honestly don't miss Amazon, I buy less stuff and feel better about it.

I've been an eBay customer for 25+ years and it's worse than ever with fraud. It's gotten so bad that my account now warns me that I'm at risk if I report any more purchases on there.

Examples: 1.) Bought my wife a dress, it came and had multiple defects that were not in the photographs. I reached out to the seller and they didn't offer a refund but said "sorry". I have no recourse if I don't open a dispute. If I open a dispute I get penalized. 2.) I bought "Mid Century Modern" metal wall art. The listing said 1960's and the photos were of two metal wall art items with no markings. The items came with a clear "Made in China" marking on each of them that was not in the photos. These are modern inspired pieces not actual mid century modern. I opened a dispute and got my refund from the seller who didn't even ask to have them shipped back. 3.) Purchased a video game that showed NTSC ESRB rating on the front of the game in the photos. What came was the european PAL release. Not only is that version not playable on this console but the value of the two items is distinctly different (PAL is worth far less).

I'm done shopping on eBay until they have new management. At least Amazon honors their buyers policy.

This sounds like you are running an ad blocker that’s breaking stuff.

I also run an ad blocker in all my devices and have to periodically disable it because it’s breaking random sites in ways that look like the site’s fault.

Do you think it's more likely all these major websites are broken, or that you are doing something to cause the problem?

I don't use eBay much, but I use Firefox exclusively and never recall any issues with it there.

> walmart: still get the "technical issues" error page.

Try a different browser. I use Waterfox for most general purpose browsing and it rarely works with Walmart.com, while Chrome works fine.

>Why is a purchase ever in such a hurry? Short delivery only really encurrage impulse purchases.

We never do impulse buys for frivolous throwaway consumerism junk but fast ~2 day delivery is still very helpful because... Life Happens ... such as stuff unexpectedly breaking and you want to have a replacement to quickly fix it.

Example of 2 events just in the last month: (1) garage door screw coupler broke. It's the piece that connects the motor shaft to the screw drive. You cannot buy this type of oddball part from Home Depot or Lowes. Amazon had it and delivered it the next day so I was able to repair the door immediately. The alternative of waiting a week+ for slower delivery means the door has to be disengaged from the track so it can be manually raised and lowered. This is not acceptable because I don't have the specific key to the garage locking mechanism from the outside. Why don't I have a key?!? Because life happens. I guess I could manually lock it from the inside and leave the car outside the garage for a week but I didn't like the idea of leaving a catalytic converter exposed to drive-by theft.

(2) was my Skechers work boots had the sole separated from the shoe. I bought the same model shoes from Amazon for $59.99 and had it in 2 days. I could drive to the local Skechers store but they charge $79.99. So either wait a week+ for slow delivery or pay $20 extra plus round trip gas money to buy at the local store.

Amazon quick delivery acts as a JIT (Just In Time) inventory system to take care of unexpected things that happen in life. That's a more sane alternative than holding a bunch of inventory of random parts for things that might go wrong.

Btw, Amazon often offers extra reward points credited to your account if you voluntarily choose slow delivery instead of 2 days. This is what we do the majority of the time. I assume Amazon does this pseudo "cashback" incentive as a way to consolidate as many customer orders as they can to optimize their delivery routes and reduce costs.

Oftentimes I'm buying maybe a tool or a part or something like that which isn't necessarily available in my local hardware store.

Having a predictable delivery date for that on top of it most of the time being way faster than anywhere else is really nice. If I buy some of these somewhere else I might wait weeks for a small part due to logistics issues or low availability compared to Amazon

Not all purchases are things that are just consumable/materialistic. I find most of the time the stuff I buy on Amazon nowadays are things like this, where I want something I need but can't easily get locally or am too busy to go out and get during stores hours.

Oh no my toilet broke, the hardware store is 45 minutes away, and I have work and kids. Don't worry, I don't want the replacement part overnight. It arrives when it arrives!

In the former German Democratic Republic waiting for your car (Trabant) to arrive after ordering took 12+ years on average

I just said its often not even the hurry. I just want an ETA!

Purchasing decisions for "this arrives in 2 days" are different than "this may take 2 weeks".

It's the difference between saving me a run to the local big box store or not.

> It arrives when it arrives.

Yeah, but will I be at home when it does? We no longer live in a world where everyone has a nuclear family and the wife is always home while dad is at work. In 2026, only the rich can afford a housewife.

Most of the time I am indeed not in a hurry to receive my purchases. For most items I genuinely could not care less if it arrived tomorrow or two weeks from now. But I do need to know when it will arrive, so that someone is home to receive it.

"A month from now, on a Monday morning" versus "A month from now, on a Tuesday afternoon" makes a huge difference for me, as one of them would result in me having to walk to my front door and the other would result in me having to rent a car and spend an entire afternoon having to go to the other side of the city to pick it up at some warehouse.

90% of the time I choose next-day delivery it is because I know I will be home tomorrow, and the alternative is "some random day next week". If they offered me the option to pick out of a bunch of guaranteed delivery moments next week which are convenient for the seller/shipper, I would!

I almost never impulse buy. When I order something, it's because I need it. And if I need it, I definitely care that it arrives quickly.

POV: you just completed the order and discovers you have ordered from China and it will comme in 100 small packages over a period of three months.

i'd love a 'slow amazon' variant where i could shop for things as normal throughout the week, but it would hold them all until a single specified time where i could do a final review/approval of orders for the whole household the order and then have it submitted at once.

I'd win because I could remove the late-night impulse buys and de-duplicated things added by multiple family members.

They win because it simplifies shipping logistics/packaging and actually encourages more loose/impulse driven buying ("just add it to the cart, we'll review it later").

It gives more confidence in the service at the time I'm thinking about the order. I want it to be reliable so I don't need to track and worry about it.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

This is such a remarkably silly take that I’m struggling to believe it’s being offered in good faith.

I want to like Amazon, they're just so damn convenient. But the number of reasons to avoid them is getting longer all the time. Fake/sponsored reviews, never showing me what actually searched for, allowing sellers to reuse old listings, and allowing sellers to add counterfeit and used items to genuine listings are all my main complaints.

Oh and prime video has ads now.

I read about this happening a lot here and elsewhere, and I don't get it. I buy many iDevices from Amazon, for example Apple Watch Ultra (1, 2, 3), and AirPods Pro (1, 2, 3). Most with AppleCare 2 years plan, some without. Also some accessories.

If the item is counterfeit, not only is sometimes the packaging/actual product identifiable by anyone that is actually a tech person, but lets assume that it's identical or whatever.

Unboxing?

When you open the AirPods box for the first time does the iPhone do that animation and say "Set up AirPods..." etc?

When you use it, does it sound at least kinda like the quality you expect from a 200 USD Apple headphone? Does Dolby Atmos work, the stems on both sides, the wireless charge on the box, the Find My features, live translation, transparency, noise cancellation? All of those features are present and working?

Going to settings -> AppleCare and Warranty should show the time of manufacture, of purchase, and the end time for the warranty (or if AppleCare, for AppleCare).

I guess I see a counterfeit passing my step 1: hardware, or maybe step 2: software (really shouldn't tbh? Apple should cover for this).

But the data on AppleCare and Warranty come from Apple's server. Even if they spoofed the serial number that would mean guessing a correct serial number for that same product type and spoofing the date of sale etc on AppleCare&Warranty.

I honestly don't see how this can happen. If the counterfeit is honestly so identical at that point it's just the same product, but even so.

I buy clothes, other tech stuff there. Is it really necessary to instill on me and hundreds of other OCDs the constant existential fear that everything we buy is actually an exactly identical and unverifiable impostor of the real item, but not actually real?

Edit: Just to clarify, I've indeed used warranty/AC+ on most of these items and all were real. For now.

Same here, but for _several_ electronics. Every advantage that Amazon has over other retailers is mooted by bootlegging. Being forced to authenticate or return products regularly is a major pain in the ass.

I bought an Apple Polishing Cloth and it turned out to be counterfeit (no Apple logo embroided on it). Thankfully easy returns even 6+ months later.

So you never connected this to your Apple account/ iPhone? And if so Apple couldn't detect that it is fake?

What happened after that? How was it resolved?

The issue is that in many cases, this is not what is being sold on Amazon. There is good chinese brand/product (I love my chinese IEM), but when looking for many household items, you will find the white label, probably not compliant with local regulation, type of product. When it is not an outright scam.

I actually have a recent example : I do woodworking and for the last step of finishing some of the thing I build, I use a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. Beeswax has been harder and harder to find locally. Not so long ago, every hardware shop had some. Now it has been displaced by synthetic product. So unless you know a local beekeeper, you are sol. So, resigned, I went to Amazon. It had a trove of listing for "100% natural beeswax". Turns out, ALL of them are paraffin dyed to look like beeswax. You can report it to Amazon, they don't care. They will reimburse you, but never remove the listing.

The problem for me is (and this holds across AliExpress as well), if I search for something, I get presented 30 different versions of the same thing, almost all from an unknown brand out of China, all with near-perfect reviews. I don't know if they're all the same thing, just relabeled; some are cheap copies of one original good version (and which one was is the good original); or something else. And if I end up with a cheap knockoff, how to resolve the issue - endless phone calls with a call-center in China and multiple rounds of trans-Pacific shipping? No thanks.

None of that is a knock against Chinese goods. I bought a set of Chinese carbon bicycle wheels last year and they're great. But, I went straight to the source and didn't take chances with AliExpress or Amazon.

My dad likes to tell me how when he was a kid, "Made in Japan" meant "this is garbage." When I was a kid "Made in China" meant, "this is garbage."

I've just ordered a dining table and a set of dining chairs from China using a sourcing agent mixed with TaoBao. It's costing me about £1200 ($1500) so far delivered to the door and if I was to buy this complete setup in the UK, it would cost about £2500. The only problem has been delivery time and the back and forth with the Chinese sourcing agent hasn't been great in terms of communication, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give an extra £1000 to Western retailers that are hellbent on following the Amazon model and ripping off customers.

A lot of Chinese name brands are extremely high quality, as good as or better than the American equivalent. Anker is one of the better known examples. However, there is also a lot of unbranded or white label garbage made by the lowest bidder to try to spawn camp popular search terms.

Yeah I have a bunch of Chinese products I've bought that are way better than any Western products.

For all sorts of products like various electronic devices and kitchen gadgets, they are just iterating way faster on product feedback.

I think of some product I'd like to have, and discover somebody in China invented it 9 months ago and I can buy it through Amazon for $19. I buy it and use it for six months, then realize I really wish it had some other feature. I check Amazon, and now it's in its third generation with the feature I want plus two others.

I don't get why people are complaining. It's genuinely amazing, and a kind of entrepreneurial spirit I can only respect. Why people get hung up on the random-letter brand names is beyond me, who cares?

Most things are made in China anyway. Some of it is counterfeit junk, but often it's the same factory they use to make "American" brands. They just keep the assembly line running and use a different brand name.

> Some clothing manufacturers on Amazon even email me for exact measurements

how do they have your email? this makes me worried

I do wonder whether you're comparing two different versions of chinese products?

IE, you're seeing and buying things they're selling directly, so they need to manage quality control, vs what is being sold on amazon, potentially a 3rd party seller who's cutting corners to make a nicer margin?

You got a link for the clothes?

https://www.fda.gov/food/alerts-advisories-safety-informatio...

> vs. waiting two to four weeks to ship from China.

In UK, the average for my AliExpress orders is now 1 week.

Amazon Prime is quite good, tbh. There’s a whole layer of complexity your life loses when you know you can get life essentials within a few hours with no planning.

A lot of the time when i visit such a listing all the good reviews turn out to be for some unrelated product, the listing was clearly swapped.

There are some differences.

Temu’s UI is unusable. You are constantly presented with roulette wheels for coupons you can’t dismiss. Its dark patterns have dark patterns. AliExpress is only mildly better in that you can dismiss stuff.

Both T and A still have listings for things that will likely result in you getting something entirely different. This usually applies to more expensive and physically larger items. You might order a greenhouse and get a photo of one or a schematic of one. And I don’t mean that the description will make it clear.

Both have a pattern where they might list let’s say an MP3 player which costs $30 but the price on the listing will be $3 because one of the product variants is just the case.

Amazon has comparatively reliable shipping and it’s included with the price on a majority of products if you have a Prime membership. While Temu and AliExpress do have US-based shipping they still don’t guarantee when the thing will arrive and if you are looking at these products the price difference basically disappears.

I am not defending Amazon by any means, but purely on usability it wins hands down.

You mean you don't want to buy the finest grade $59.95 blender for your kitchen from LONCEVON or ARVAGGCCY or ADVWUXITEKPRO ?

The tricky part now is identifying the individual CN vendors which are not yet well known in the English marketplace, that are also known to make good quality things (and generally they're not cheap), I'll use Sofirn flashlights and headlamps as an example. Mostly not sold via Amazon.

Theres also no moral reason to support Amazon, they give nothing back to the society their buyers live in, much like the chinese suppliers. Might aswell just go with the cheapest.

It's important to remember that the support channels a company wants you to use aren't the only options you have. If a company doesn't offer reasonable support you can always go the bezos@amazon.com route and include their highest paid person you can find (read: their still relatively highly paid secretary) so that just skimming over your mail to filter it out will cost them more than half-way decent support. Throw in a CC to a regulator when appropriate. Much better experience than dealing with chatbots or call center wait lines before that.

You just buy an Apple product and they send you a fake. They commingle counterfeit stuff with legit products (at least they used to) so it was luck of the draw.

It just shows up in the box. Their inventory is comingled.

You simplify it too much to support your argument. For example, Tefal makes some of its frying pans in France, but AFAIK they also offer some products made in China to capture the cheaper part of the market. Price does not guarantee quality or being made in Europe, but if you target the cheapest, that's what you'll get.

For kitchen stuff, look for a local restaurant supply place. Check first that they aren't wholesale only, but enough restaurants are small that many of them do retail sales as well.

Prices are much better than the consumer-focused brands and normally everything is higher quality as well.

> Returns elsewhere are almost impossible.

That however can be solved with laws, like we did in Europe.

Much faster and less discussion too. I never had a good experience with Amazon so far. The 3 times or so it took well over a month and many emails to process anything

I don't think that's the same thing at all. Amazon forces price changes across all the vendor's other outlets, such as Walmart, their own website etc.

If Costco requires a separate SKU, the seller still has complete pricing freedom everywhere else.

Costco is a membership club, and AFAIK these have different rules.

Yes, because “free” market deregulation has worked out so well for consumers over the last 30 years.

“Don’t like the monopoly? You’re free to go elsewhere. No wait, there is no elsewhere. Oh well, I guess you must like it here then since you keep coming back. “

Because it's monopolistic and hinders other competitors from entering the marketplace which harms consumers in the longterm.

Because its a collective action problem. Being on Amazon is the least bad option for any individual business even though they would all be better off if they left simultaneously. IMO a primary purpose of market regulation should be to counteract these types of problems so that the market can move itself out of a local maxima and become more efficient overall.

It's already illegal in EU and UK

"why would I not order on Amazon and save myself $50?"

Because of principles?

It seems that in the past 20 years the concept of boycotting a company in response to their behaviour has been lost.

The last widespread boycott I remember was from the late 2000s against Sony, I can't even remember why ( rootkits on CDs? ) but I'm still boycotting them now as it's an automatic reaction.

If you find a Brother printer is full price from Staples, Best Buy, and the Brother website, but $50 off on Amazon, you take that price information to your in person Staples or Best Buy and ask if they price match it. They look at your rewards card/members card, say "Sure" and throw in extra toner at a good price. Or they point out that you are looking at a counterfeit product on Amazon and you get a good collective laugh.

If a Brother printer is $150 from Amazon, but $100 on Staples, Best Buy and the Brother website, why would you not order on a non-amazon site and save yourself $50?

Answer: you probably would, but Amazon engages in illegal, coercive price fixing to drive up the prices on those other sites by $50.

All those easy returns are paid for by Amazon's higher prices.

At least when I buy direct from the manufacturer the extra tax I pay goes straight to them and not amazon.

The Visa tax is illegal now btw. Places are increasingly offering cash or debit discounts.

I expected the site to look good after all that shit talking, but it just looks like china-slop sites like shein and Alibaba. And it has all the exact same mechanics as amazon. I had to scroll the entire page to stop seeing sponsored products.

> Amazon pays $20/hour because most people don't have the mental constitution to put up with it. It's pretty dull.

And Walmart gets away with $14 because Walmart is intellectually stimulating?

I’m not a fan of Amazon either, but you keep spamming that link. The law suit is clearly about mistakes in the return process over 9 years claiming to account for 600 million dollars in returns. Amazon does 600 billion a year in revenue. So 600 million over 9 years is a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Hope that helps.

I have the exact opposite experience.

I returned two products, got two different return codes, was supposed to send each back separately.

During the return (it was a Kohl's return), I forgot about the two different codes and gave both items to the clerk, who then packaged both items with only one code.

I got credited for the first item a few hours later. At that point, I realized my mistake of packaging both in the same return, but thought it was a lost case and chalked it up as a loss.

Imagine my surprise when, a few weeks (!) later , I got credited for the second return as well. How did they figure that one out? I don't know.

The most amazing customer service, where I did not even have to mention it and the error was still rectified.

definitely not a $2 product, it is big, glass surface, heavy etc.

That "shopping around" for with price being the sole factor is the problem. That's what drives quality down. Not the Amazon markup.

Try having a discussion with anyone here in the US about not using Amazon. The free market is a myth.

> The policy described in the article doesn't apply in the EU, but it's not like Amazon is cheaper in the EU.

Do we know that? Also: It's not about Amazon being cheaper but their competitors being allowed to be cheaper.

It's insane that it's legal for a major marketplace platform to prohibit vendors from using their platform to engage in manipulative price discrimination?

Online stores should be forced to allow manufacturers to use their sites as free advertising platforms to expose consumers to their products, while incentivizing them to actually complete the transaction someplace else?

Should brick-and-mortar stores not be allowed to offer price matching either?

It’s funny to me that people look at the wild runaway success of the American experiment and conclude that it needs more cronyism like every other country.

Please feel free to implement whatever unfavorable policies you like in your own nations. You are welcome to further drive down your GDP per capita if you’d like. That’s not what the US is though.

It's even worse in Ireland, particularly with the new import fees for non-EU goods - €7 + 23% VAT per item.

Amazon Germany/France/Spain won't ship a huge variety of items to Ireland and obviously won't have the same composition of goods as English speaking countries.

It's just about worth it for Prime Video and Deliveroo Silver, but the Irish Prime membership doesn't even support household or family sharing...

Yep, prime membership went quite a lot up; prices went up; delivery times got slower after COVID; now they are also saving on packaging, which means Royal mail brings me broken packages held by elastic bands...

I'm no Amazon fan but very cheap next day is still an Amazon advantage, and a pretty big one. £9/mo vs £4-8 per delivery from other retailers

Unlike the US I believe in practice it's all but guaranteed next day too

Tempting to think that, but that logistical miracle machine that thus far no one has been able to fully replicate is expensive. Their global operating margin ex-AWS (which is a whole different beast) was 6.8% in Q2. (AWS was 39%)

That's actually not anything phenomenal -- and worse than I thought before I looked it up just now. I can't understand AMZN's stock valuation. They should really spin off AWS to be its own thing.

Their international margins are even worse in isolation, 4.1%. That's not even worth getting out of bed for, just buy some bonds and skip all the drama.

VAT should be done by AliExpress now, at least that is how I understood it.

Sadly it's only limited items, but you can also filter for just items that they have in their EU warehouse.

I recently bought some stuff (Ps2 controller etc) and it was still cheaper including shipping and duty then to order it in EU. Package was checked by customs.

Same problem here. In my country at least, the handling fees for the local shipping are around USD10, you can avoid those using a courier but that shipping method is much more expensive.

Well, it's usually much cheaper to use a non-Amazon 3PL to ship your Amazon volume (along with other D2C channels), but then you might not have the prime badge if you go on the cheaper side of the market.

And even if you want a prime badge, it's often/usually cheaper to go with a 3PL that can do some sort of SFP setup if you have reasonable volumes.

Although Amazon has a stranglehold on 3PL's too (or if you are a seller offering SFP), as they will force you to use Amazon Logistics at a certain % of volume if you want the prime badge which can be more expensive than other carriers.

(I work in logistics consulting and do network strategy design & 3PL selection as part of that so have a reasonably up to date view on comparative/competitive costs for this sort of thing - mostly in Europe though and appreciate the USA market is different)

Sure, but that was only several of the couple dozen fees

The endgame of free market was always plain and obvious: shittiest possible products at lowest possible price, and no one in the entire value chain having above-sustenance any margins.

Or we just go somewhere else that's cheaper, because capitalism means competition.

I think it is interesting you think that people are believing fiction about Amazon when it comes to convenience. This reminds of the AI debate. Some people think AI is great and others think it is stupid. Neither side can see the others perspective.

Well if you live in some areas (Greater Seattle any ways) it's often same-day arrival so it's even more addictive and useful.

Fair. It's going to vary by category and other factors. But more and more I'm seeing stuff that is actually cheaper IRL.

I only see the graph in the paragraph titled "Where an Amazon sale goes", which tells what the fees are now, not which fees have increased since 2014.

I mean, I've not heard much good about support from Shopify in the case of dodgy merchants

Yeah, it shouldn't really be too surprising that software distribution, and indeed retail generally, have changed radically in the forty years since Walter's anecdote but here we are.

Good luck finding a reseller for your product that does not do it.

> This is obviously, hilariously untrue when Amazon produces hundreds of billions of dollars of profit every year

It's an irrelevant figure to your claim. The relevant statistic would be the markup, not the aggregate profit.