Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.”
If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
google.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.
B&Q in the UK went exactly the same way - used to be pretty reliable, and I didn't mind paying the extra to have all the things a home DIYer might need without going to half a dozen different builder's merchants and trade suppliers. Then they opened their store page up to anyone who wanted to list anything even tangentially related to home improvements and predictably it's a huge heap of drop-shipped rubbish and it's all been SEO'ed to the Nth degree to appear higher in the search rankings than anything actually sold by B&Q.
eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.
"This item will arrive tomorrow at 9 AM" -> Pay -> "Sorry this item can't be delivered by tomorrow will be delivered 2 days later" -> Next day -> "This item will be delivered 3 weeks from now"
> leave a product review in exchange for a free bed scrunchie accessory
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation).
If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
I use Amazon when I've planned poorly and need something the next/same day. But, actually, less and less over time because Walmart and HEB (Texas grocery store w/ solid delivery) keep improving their delivery offerings.
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing.
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
Have you ever paid for legal services? If you are a small business you may not be able to afford 4-500 USD/hour while they make phone calls and type emails.
I can’t believe Nekhala managed to gross $6million on a bed scrunchy on Amazon without Chinese competitors pirating the design, even with a US patent. That in itself is a major accomplishment. At some point when progressives finally take the house perhaps we can get some real regulations in place so that someone banned from the system like this has recourse other than call tree AI.
It's by no means limited to amazon. $50k or less gets you arbitrary account information from almost any large site you can name, similar rates for access to information that's supposed to be law enforcement only, or to get someone's realtime cellphone location. If it's not via a corrupt insider, it's by corrupt LEO, or impersonating LEO.
The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 53.7 ms ] threadIf I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
a) You could search for keywords without also matching keywords that have your keyword as a sub-string
b) "Sort by lowest price including shipping" actually did what it says
As it is you often have to wade through tons of undesired crap to get to what you want.
I also don't like that eBay sellers can see that you viewed their product and send you price offers.
Oh and let's not forget the popup nagging you to use their app for a discount ... while you are typing something into the search bar.
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation). If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
I have not bought from them since 2005.
There is no need
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
The only way to have a reasonable level of privacy against a well funded attacker is to not provide anything private to companies in the first place.