[sytelus]

Amazon remains totally complacent of these issues which are now professionally hacked by China based providers day in and out. Tons of vitamins are now fake and downright harmful. A lot of books, even small scale ones, are also fake and very low quality.

I tried to move my purchases to Walmart and surprisingly, even after 25 years, they haven’t got act together. Walmart even haven’t recognized that they should jump on this problem by prominently showing authentic brand logo or something.

I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!

Amazon is definitely riding on this utterly deficient competitors and that’s why they get to be so complacent.

[pulisse]

> A lot of books, even small scale ones, are also fake and very low quality.

My sister works in manga and anime publishing and this is an existential threat to her company. Some of the issues they're grappling with:

1. For some of their titles, the genuine item doesn't even appear among search results on Amazon—only the counterfeits do.

2. The quality issues with the counterfeits can result in losing all future business from a customer. For example, download codes will be missing or non-functional. Irrational as it is, customers blame the publisher when this happens and stop buying further titles from them.

3. Amazon seems to be using some slapdash ML to determine how many of each title to order. They'll purchase 10k of vols. 5 and 7 of a series and only 1k of vol. 6. Guess how many of that 10k of vol. 7 end up selling when that happens?

Amazon is, needless to say, non-responsive to their concerns.

[hinkley]

My local library had books 1-3 and 5-6 of a series I was reading by an author who I own all of her later books. I even tried to find a copy at the local used shop, thinking I would read it and then donate it, but due to her rising star they had printed new editions in a completely different style, and size. I ended up pirating a copy of that book instead. Then bought the audio book for a book I already owned as penance.

I suspect when there are gaps that either the counterfeiters win or nobody wins.

[gs17]

> They'll purchase 10k of vols. 5 and 7 of a series and only 1k of vol. 6. Guess how many of that 10k of vol. 7 end up selling when that happens?

I've noticed that too in manga. It's amazing they screw it up so bad, given their origin as a book seller.

[mcv]

What I'd like to know is: has anyone ever sued Amazon for this? There seems to be plenty of evidence for a massive class action suit. They are knowingly and intentionally screwing sellers and customers alike.

[steviedotboston]

Check out the recalls from https://www.cpsc.gov/

Amazon lists thousands of junk products from China that violate US laws around product safety. Toys containing lead paint, crib bumpers that can suffocate babies, etc. The process seems to be that Amazon just needs to remove the product in violation but it really appears that this is a wholesale attempt on Amazon's part to circumvent legislation. It should not be this trivial for consumers to find products that are potentially dangerous.

[xp84]

I'm especially annoyed at the electrical equipment category. 20 years ago it would be hard to find even a power strip or AC adapter for sale in America that wasn't UL listed. Even dollar store merchandise usually had the label.

Today, you can only buy two kinds of such products: The (I assume Alibaba-sourced) Amazon Marketplace, fulfilled by Amazon items which are never UL listed, and brand-name items from a brick and mortar store, which cost 8x the price of the equivalent 'Amazon special.'

I know "UL" is just a label and that not having it doesn't necessarily prove anything, but absent any form of certification, an device on Amazon Marketplace may come from a vendor that has literally never even submitted a sample for quality testing to anyone. BigClive on YouTube has shown some shocking (literally) teardowns.

I've heard that insurance companies will deny a claim if your house burns down due to a non-UL-listed device causing a fire. Terrifying.

[x0x0]

That's because Amazon is, in large part, a front end over Alibaba with exactly zero enforcement of regulation. But they do manage to charge way more!

[conductr]

I think if you were to ask them, being a "Marketplace" means they have little responsibility. "Retailers" have much more legal responsibility in terms of vetting manufacturers, supply chain concerns, product safety, etc

[meindnoch]

Does Amazon also contact and reimburse the customers who bought the recalled products?

[profsummergig]

I wanted to try out the tee-shirt hustle once.

There was a cool design (or at least I thought so) I came up with. Had about 100 of those printed.

Went to Amazon to get a seller account:

1) learned that if I had only 1 tee-shirt with a single design to sell, I couldn't get the account.

2) after researching the competition, discovered that many of the tee-shirt designs for sale were:

    a) clearly in copyright violation (e.g. Disney characters on some mom & pop store.
    
    b) their images on their store were just a photoshopped tee-shirt. I.e., not photos of the actual tee-shirt they had for sale. But the design photoshopped on to a photo of a blank tee-shirt.

Boggled my mind that Amazon was okay with this.

[riffraff]

Copyright violation on t-shirts seems to be the norm, it's not just Amazon. Basically every t-shirt seller out there will allow user-submitted design that infringe on someone's IP.

I'm not complaining, cause I love my Mario/Banksy crossover t-shirt, but it's just how it is, Disney & co just don't bother going after them, they're happy to sell you their official™ stuff through other channels.

[busyant]

> I tried to move my purchases to Walmart

Walmart does (or at least did) something similar.

* About 7 years ago, I purchased a toy drone online from Walmart for one of my sons for Christmas.

* I purchased it before Thanksgiving because the Walmart website urged me to purchase in time for Christmas delivery.

* My son opened the gift on Christmas and the drone was broken (out of the box).

* I tried to return the drone to a brick-and-mortar Walmart store and they told me that they couldn't issue a refund because I bought it on their website, but it was through a 3rd party seller. I had to take it up with the 3rd party.

* Remember the part where I said I bought the drone before Thanksgiving?? Well, I contacted the 3rd party and was told they had a strict 30 day return policy and they could not issue a refund.

It was a cheap gift, but the whole ordeal bothers me to this day.

[SoftTalker]

Yes I buy household stuff on Walmart's website quite often, but only stuff sold and shipped by Walmart. They have a lot of third party listings on the site also, which many people may not realize, or if they do, they don't understand that Walmart only facilitates the transaction for these, you cannot do returns or get support at a Walmart store.

[conductr]

This is an issue with many retailers surrounding holiday and 30 day policies.

You'd think they could use some exception for defective items versus just normal return/exchange, but they rarely do

[SkyPuncher]

I just saw a Walmart commercial where they were proudly pronouncing they had half-billion items.

I couldn’t help to think that I wanted anything but that. I want a lot of items, but I prefer quality items over random crap.

[gavinsyancey]

For books, your local independent bookstore can order pretty much any book for you if you walk in and ask (if they don't already have what you want). They won't charge shipping, it'll just come with their next shipment from the publisher and then you can come pick it up. Or if you have to do things online, try https://bookshop.org

[cafard]

That can very much depend on your local independent store. I have had mixed results over the years.

[account42]

Having to physically go to a store just to you can at some point physically go to a store to buy something is quite a large amount of friction compared to pressing a button and having something show up at your door.

[monkeyelite]

And they will charge me $50 for making an online order.

Why are we romanizing middle-men between you and a web form?

[canpan]

The "incompetent competitors" is a big point for me. I prefer to buy from a more trusted local (in Japan) store. But it is so cumbersome! Buying something on Amazon is fast and smooth, and they have a huuge selection. Regarding price, many stores here price fit, so Amazon is not actually cheaper.

[rtpg]

I was having a conversation earlier today with an acquaitance who bought rubbing alcohol off of Amazon because according to him none of the pharmacies in his city have it.

He lives in Seattle.

It really feels like people's behaviors have been permanently changed for the worst, even if a "proper" competitor comes in.

I no longer have prime shipping, and seeing "shipping: $5" next to anything on Amazon definitely helps me to do at least cursory searches in local stores... would probably be a net benefit to society to outlaw Prime

[IrishTechie]

I often think how great it would be to have a site where I could see all the shops nearby that have stock of X at Y price even if they don’t do online shopping. For example I am certain there are multiple places near me that have some 5m 10t tie-down straps, I’d happily drive to one to collect, but I won’t drive or ring 10-20 shops to find them so just order on Amazon.

It’s a tough problem I guess with so many stock systems out there and inevitably whoever creates the site will want to monetise it, then slowly enshitify it.

[thayne]

> and they have a huuge selection

That's the big thing for me. I don't live close to a big city, so local selection is pretty limited. For some things there isn't even a local store available.

[dfxm12]

The lesson they have learned is that people who care, can tell the difference and shop with them are such a small minority that it isn't worth it to their bottom line to address this. The government doesn't seem to care either. The market isn't going to fix this.

Maybe you can round up enough people for a common cause as discussed in the article, but that doesn't scale. Take notice that for all its talk about America first policy & general sinophobia, the current admin in Washington hasn't done anything about this either. They don't care about American small businesses or consumers. They only care about people like Jeff Bezos, the Waltons, etc.

[coredog64]

The other half of this is that the degraded marketplace rewards ad spending, and ad spending is now a significant amount of revenue for Amazon (IIRC, it's behind AWS but doesn't need nearly as many people)

[speeder]

I used to buy a certain book series on fictionwise, because it was the only site selling those books in my country.

B&N bought Fictionwise, and first thing they did was determine that you need to be physically inside USA to download stuff.

Now only way for me to get those books is pirated. :( Maybe I should just download them pirated and donate the price of the books directly to the author account or something. I really don't understand what is the problem of B&N or how they still exist, they are literally anti-business.

[dylan604]

How did they determine if you were physically within the US? How would using a VPN not provide the same ability?

[jekwoooooe]

I would barely trust Amazon for authentic shampoo never mind vitamins. Are people so desperate to save single dollars they gamble with their health?

[lmm]

It's not about being cheaper, it's about convenience. And realistically what's the more trustworthy alternative? Even the reputable high street shops sell homeopathy and bags of random herbs that might be the thing on the label, never mind picking a no-name online store.

[newAccount2025]

Aren’t vitamins a crapshoot anywhere? I thought there was basically no regulations on any of it.

[2muchcoffeeman]

It’s the next day shopping. If you have something fairly unimportant, you can get it from Amazon next day regardless of your schedule. But yes. Buy local if possible!

[PaulHoule]

AMZN is my last choice for buying anything. An attempt to buy this stuff

https://www.amazon.com/stores/RIVALZ/page/5690A202-6DDB-42BA...

because my wife found one flavor, slightly expired, at the Amish market and liked it fell through when I tried to buy it straight from the vendor because they charged my credit card with a scammy-looking name neither I nor American Express had ever heard of. Can't get it at Walmart.com, so... (For that matter, Walmart had the first five books of Bocchi the Rock and #7 but not #6)

Ever since the time I saw a product listing though which made no sense at all and reported it and got a reply that they don't care if I didn't buy it I started losing trust. Didn't help that 2 day delivery became 5 days suddenly and the fact that I live in a rural area is no excuse because I used to see an AMZN delivery truck driving around in my neighborhood every Sunday. After I quit Prime they started giving me free trials or a week for $2 whenever I bought something and... now I get the 2 day delivery everyone else gets.

[Freak_NL]

Why are you writing 'AMZN' instead of 'Amazon'?

[gs17]

> Walmart had the first five books of Bocchi the Rock and #7 but not #6

Wonder if it's similar to what this comment mentions about Amazon (even down to the example being 5 and 7 but no 6): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44354938 Maybe Walmart is trying to match Amazon's stock to avoid spending too much to compete with them.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Walmart.com is a rebranded Jet.com. They've only owned it for 9 years.

[ungreased0675]

It’s surprising they’re not trying to take Amazon market share by eliminating scammy third party vendors and counterfeit products. I think people would be interested in an Amazon like service without the dropshipped and fake junk.

[bmitc]

And they have the same problems because they allow third party sellers. So far, Target seems it hasn't gone done this rode yet.

[kulahan]

I have no clue if it’s still true, but Wal-Mart back in the day used to go to the manufacturers of some products and request that same product at a lower price. The idea was “get it to us at that cost, no matter what you have to do” - so you would see name brand products meant to be very similar to ones you would see, but with inferior build quality, and the only distinguishing mark is that it has a different product ID from the manufacturer.

Point being: it doesn’t matter if Walmart does this, because it’s already an empty promise from them, too.

Just stop shopping at these behemoths.

[pimlottc]

Fast Company did a famous article about this back in 2003, with the example of a gallon jar of pickles priced at $2.97:

https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know-2

https://archive.is/e25nB

[bee_rider]

That is pretty sketchy behavior. But… it still doesn’t seem quite as bad as letting some third party steal an established listing.

At least users will correctly blame some well-known brand for their shoddy craftsmanship.

[threetonesun]

Bookshop.org if you want your books local local. Best Buy for electronics (or B&H if it's near you). General home goods I've gone back to just using the grocery store. Amazon just outright can't be trusted as a marketplace any more.

[sharkjacobs]

It doesn't hurt that Amazon can leverage economies of scale which are orders of magnitude greater than their utterly deficient competitors

[account42]

They only got to those scales by offering a better service than the previous entrenched competition.

[zombot]

In these cases, it does hurt.

[ps]

My client sells on Amazon in Europe and is constantly harassed for presumed IP infringement, safety issues etc. usually due to somebody else either incorrectly renaming item or item name containing some trigger like "life", "battery" or some other brand's name. I always wonder how are examples like yours possible there at all.

[MobiusHorizons]

Sheer volume mostly. Lots of scammy companies create new accounts to sell products until someone complains, then the abandon the account and start a new one. Basically the same as most spam operations

[cyral]

I also noticed lots of dubious companies selling hot tub/pool chemicals. I assume there is a more stringent approval process for this as legitimate companies sell them, but knockoffs use accents like "Chlóriñē" to get around whatever filter Amazon has.

[xp84]

Seeing evasions like that are a really strong 'code smell' to me that the 'regulator' in question is in on the scam.

Imagine if you were standing in front of a narcotics officer on the street, and you say to your friend "Hey, I have some Cane-Coke available. wink. Want to buy it?" He's standing right there, and doesn't bat an eye.

That's Amazon. They care about following laws, regulations, etc. exactly enough to have plausible deniability and no further. Oh gee, Sarge, that guy was speaking in code and I had no idea he was selling drugs.

If they cared, they'd ban sellers immediately for evading a filter, and raise barriers to entry until it was painful to start a new account. Like requiring every seller to have a US entity with a real business license and an identity-verified named agent, and ban the agent and anyone else they represent for violations. This is just one quick idea but by no means the only way. But you can bet Amazon would never even try to police their marketplace better because they'd rather just skim their cut of both legitimate and fraudulent or illegal activity.

[mathieuh]

Amazon also has their own book printing service that they sell books from under several marques, I assume to make it more difficult to tell it’s from them.

The books are very low quality with poor typesetting that makes them unpleasant to read.

[account42]

Yes it's really sad how with how much Amazon have been getting shittier they are still the best around. Refunds is another thing that is almost always a pain with other stores but Amazon makes it smooth (but sadly also more and more necessary).

Another pain point is shipping costs. With Amazon I can just filter for free shipping with whatever the current minimum-purchase price for that is whereas elsewhere I am too often surprised by unreasonably high shipping charges designed to make the purchase price look better on comparison sites.

[hinkley]

Why Sears Roebuck missed the boat on this I will never understand. There could have been a call to return to their past by embracing the future the moment Amazon proved it was default alive.

What the fuck, guys.

[skeeter2020]

In Canada (and I assume everywhere) it's a race to the bottom. Both WalMart and BestBuy are dominated by 3rd party products in their online stores, and you never know what you will get. Some are perfectly fine and sell legit products; others as bad as Amazon.I've found books from Indigo are pretty close to Amazon in selection, price and delivery but that's such as small part of what people buy online now.

[Beijinger]

Maybe we should do a curated shopping portal of US based mom & pop shops?

I actually made pretty good experiences with eBay.

[thaumasiotes]

> I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!

I went to barnesandnoble.com to check this out.

There's a banner at the top of the page:

> Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date.

> For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now.

The words "upgrade now" link to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/downloa... .

It does look like you're right that they won't ship books to your local B&N:

> Other reasons that an item may not be available for Buy Online, Pick Up in Store include:

> The item is out of stock in your selected store

This is very odd, because they will do that if you go into the store and order from there.

[fortran77]

Try Target.com