[AmVess]

Or the mountain of returns they have to deal with on a daily basis. I signed up for Xmas, bought some things. ALL of them returned. This isn't a counterfeit issue on my end, but the simple fact that everything they sell is garbage.

[NetMageSCW]

>but the simple fact that everything they sell is garbage

No, the simple fact is everything you bought was garbage. They sell plenty of standard, known brand items that are just as good as bought from anyone else.

[boelboel]

If you buy known brands from amazon you're bound to get counterfeit at some point. Only buy disposable garbage on amazon.

[embedding-shape]

Not sure what Amazon could do about the products being trash though? If you feel unsure about it, why don't you go inspect the item in some store in person, instead of guessing and buying it by delivery?

[macNchz]

Historically retailers have employed buyers in charge of selecting products that would appeal to the store’s customers. A customer will likely have different expectations, and have an existing understanding of what sort of products they’ll find if they’re shopping at, say, Nordstrom vs Dollar Tree vs a guy on Canal Street in NYC.

Amazon sort of threw this out with the steady movement towards blending third party sellers in with products they sell directly. They made it less and less obvious and easy to filter based on seller over time, so now you have all sorts of junk from the digital equivalent of street vendors mixed with normal products, and it’s up to the shopper to figure it out. They tolerate tricks and fraudulent behavior from those sellers much more than they should.

Amazon could, if they wanted, make it easy to filter for products that have been selected by a buyer who has a relationship with the vendor, and are directly sold by Amazon themselves, but it’s seemingly more profitable to allow third parties to peddle garbage en masse.

[nikole9696]

Not the person you're replying to, but for me, everything I buy on Amazon is bought because I have no B&M retailers that sell it. Even my local B&M stores usually have vastly reduced stock compared to what they have online (looking at you, Old Navy, Eddie Bauer and similar, who only carry petite sizes online).

[thayne]

Something I've seen a lot is a product that looks like it has good reviews, but if you read the actual reviews it is clear they were reviewing something other than the listed product. I think what happens is they swap out a quality product for trash on the same listing so that the trash a bunch of good reviews that it didn't earn. If Amazon cracked down on that, it would help a lot.

> why don't you go inspect the item in some store in person

Because a lot of times, there isn't a local store that sells it. And honestly, a lot of the stuff at local stores is trash too, sold in packaging that makes it difficult to tell before you buy it.

[TingPing]

No physical store sells most of what’s on Amazon. That doesn’t imply it’s bad either.

[fn-mote]

That’s essentially their conclusion, right?

Amazon could manage QC; other large stores do. (Admittedly not as large as Amazon.)

The quality/price/speed you see at Amazon & Aliexpress are market segment choices.

[Ritewut]

[flagged]

[mindslight]

I used to be like you. But overall the return culture changed drastically - "no fault" returns where stores have zero care to hear about how their items are defective. And then Amazon's constant games with pricing has pushed me into "buying" (ie caching) something if it's a good deal, and then making the actual purchase decision of whether I want it sometime later. Much better than "I'll think about this tonight", and then going to buy it and the price has jumped 30%, making me feel like a sucker.

If I've already got pending Amazon returns to do, adding something to the queue costs me very little. If the queue is empty, then I'm a little more deliberate. But this time of year Nov-Jan is great for this, as the return dates are further out and all on the same day Jan 31 so it doesn't catch me by surprise.

The slow spiteful shipping also pushes me into this behavior when I'm in the middle of a project. Order a few different types of a thing, decide exactly what I need when I'm in the middle of doing, and then when I'm done with the project, return the pile of leftovers.

It's felt like something enabling this dynamic has been waiting to break for years now, but so far it hasn't. The only time I've gotten pushback from Amazon is a nastygram interstitial for a while after I returned a motherboard that I opened and tested (the manufacturer could have avoided this return by documenting the IOMMU groups, but once again... return culture). I have no idea if the problem there was the opening (seemed to be fine under their published policies), or whether something else happened to the item after I handed it to their return agent and they blamed me.