Amazon has enacted a rather dumb rule with regard to paid product reviews. I was contacted about a year ago by a chinese company I have bought a lot of electronics from and left positive reviews for in the past. They offered me deep discounts (via rebate) on products if I left reviews after purchasing and using them for a while (no ‘has to be positive’ strings attached). I reviewed a couple of their products last year and put a disclaimer about being partially compensated for the review at the top. One of the products wasn’t great (it was a bottom of the barrel budget phone) and I gave it a middling review.
I didn’t hear from them for a while, then about 3 months ago they reached out with two more products they were asking me to review. Same deal. I submitted reviews this time and they got rejected because it is apparently now against Amazon’s policies to publish compensated reviews. I resubmitted the reviews with my disclaimer removed and they published them. Kinda crappy on their part that they won’t allow reviewers to divulge that information.
Which is weird. Because some reviews have a tag/label specifying “received product for free”. So there must be some way to indicate it.
I believe those are ones where it’s a product sold by Amazon first-party and Amazon themselves sent it free, maybe as part of the Amazon Vine program.
So Amazon goes by the maxim of “rules for thee, but not for me”. I can’t say that I’m surprised :)
That’s LITERALLY what their entire business is…
I always disclose in my reviews if the seller tried to bribe me and that I refused. I have yet to have one taken down for that, and I figure that’s something people might want to know.
The only time I was bribed, I left a note on my review about it, and it’s the only product review I’ve left anywhere that’s ever been rejected.
Yup that’s like exactly what I did and what happened to me, except it was a nose hair trimmer
Amazon seems to be following in the footsteps of TigerDirect and NewEgg. Both were amazing sites in the beginning, great deals, great customer service, etc… Then they started allowing fake knockoff brands, direct to consumer products from china, scammers, resellers, fake reviews, terrible refund policies, etc… and it slowly brought down the overall quality of the site and overwhelmed their support staff and eventually fucked over their reputation. The difference with Amazon is they aren’t limited to just tech, the fact that they now carry pretty much everything under the sun basically protects them from this same fate, sadly.
What are good alternatives to those sites these days?
your local store
Even local stores are allowing 3rd party sellers now. A lot of them make it really difficult to figure out what they have in store or not when you look at their website. I hate the way online shopping has gone.
Ah yes, I’ll just drop by my local Fry’s…
It’s all made overseas anyway. Might as well pay less and have it dropped at my doorstep. There is very little non-food that I get from a “local store” for less or at better quality.
Returning stuff at stores with understaffed front ends is more annoying than dropping off returns at wholefoods as well.
I’ll go back to Brick and Mortar when they go back to being the customer service models they’re supposed to be.
*cries in shit small town*
You have a local store that ships to your house in two days? Actually, you’re probably going to need several of these to cover all of the different products.
I quit Amazon in 2019, turned back to eBay. Some stuff is still drop shipped from Amazon 🥲
B&H
Succeeding at buying from Amazon is easy:
- Make sure that the local brick-and-mortar doesn’t have the thing you want first.
- Avoid products that have SEO titles (“fish bowl for fish container fish aquarium for fish”), or nonsensical manufacturer names (FDRTNHY).
- Weep quietly because it’s page 50 and there still aren’t any listings that don’t violate #2.
Or; 1. Don’t.
I never did, until I moved into a very remote area where travel expenses mean every trip needs to count so if the shops don’t have it you’re screwed. Or if they do have it, it often is too expensive compared to online offers :(
Yes, correct, that’s a summary of what #1 said.
I’m finding more things cheaper elsewhere. Even brand name stuff. I was looking for some Gorilla glue and it turned out cheaper in my local supermarket (Tesco UK) than Amazon.
Had a few crappy quality things/lost items. Have started buying elsewhere now before even looking there.
My sales are going to break Jeff Bezos but it (hopefully) might be a sign of the times.
I noticed this Black Friday, almost all name brand items totally disappeared, and most deals were garbage Chinese knockoffs/non-name brand. Then immediately after Black Friday, I saw a huge return of name brands in their featured products/deals.
I also bought a new Microsoft Surface Slim Pen 2 (for $90) recently and got a total Chinese knockoff piece of shit in a package labeled “fashion jewelry.” Total wish.com trash listed as name brand.
Amazon didn’t publish my review (I’m assuming because I said this was becoming a rampant issue on Amazon. Did refund me, but the Chinese knockoff listed as a Slim Pen 2 is still listed on Amazon.
I went and paid the same price on ebay for a factory-sealed brand new legit one. What a change we have undergone when eBay is a safer marketplace than Amazon…
This shit was all over the place on Black Friday. Some items I followed dropped in price, but were crappy versions of the same thing. Others were cheaper earlier in the month and increased on BF.
I notice prices shot up on 9/1 so they could be “reduced” by BF. It was a clear attempt to justify “50% off the average price”.
I’ve noticed the same thing here in the US. I looked at getting some toothpaste my kids like and it was about $7 on Amazon. Got it at my local Target store via an online order for under $4.
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It is bloated with poor quality no name products but it’s fine if you stick with known brands. Reviews do suck tho. Fake reviews have made the rating system is useless.
I received counterfeit of real brands on there…
I guess I’ve been lucky but I also try to buy from the official brand seller.
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That’s the thing, it was mostly the officials!
Yeah, got some fake Wiimotes a few years back. Have to wonder how much other stuff was fake that I just didn’t notice.
Not saying this isn’t happening, but the same shit has been said about Walmart for 30 years.
Their fulfillment centers are where joy goes to die. $15 an hour to be a human robot for 40-60 hours per week doesn’t sound like a great way to spend your time on this planet.
Read about PIP, Focus, and Pivot, and you’ll see that their corporate centers aren’t much better.
Imagine that every year, regardless of layoffs and people quitting, your employer tries to fire 5-10% of the entire corporate workforce. On top of this, as some people naturally manage to perform well when under pressure, imagine the number of threatened people doubling or even tripling. Now, imagine that every single year.
It’s no wonder that some tech companies don’t like hiring people that used to work at Amazon, particularly managers.
Amazons $19 starting pay is well above industry standard as well as the health care day one. You could do much much worse.
It’s people like you that make everything suck. Fucking “Race to the bottom” cheerleaders
👌👍 sorry for pointing out the numbers instead of just making crap up 🤷♂️
Let me guess, your someone who makes well north of $19/hr telling the plebs to be happy they have cake?
No I pointed out that Amazon is a poor example. If you are stuck in a shit situation they are one of the better no experience needed jobs always in demand. You get better than average healthcare and wages compared to fast food or other shittier warehouse jobs.
There is something ironic about watching LemmyIsFantastic argue with IsThIsReddit
Very meta stuff haha
A bit hailcorporate but in Switzerland we have Galaxus and they expanded into Germany a few years ago, so if anyone here is German, maybe try them once in a while, great customer service, none of the issues Amazon has.
Aliexpress when you can’t be bothered to wait
This really is it. Apart from that, for me it’s really to get specific gluten-free foods that I can’t find easily.
I don’t think “Downfall” means what this dude thinks it does…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ws3YptLmLQ - Another video, this time about stolen iPhones winding up on Amazon
Obligatory, very funny Ryan George video on ‘What shopping on Amazon feels like’
How do I get into a lawsuit for a fraudulent sword that is definitively prove, in my own hands, NOT the High Manganese steel it CLAIMED to be?
And further…is a deadly breakage of high likelihood when strking a TREE (tree is gorramn near dead anyway). If I had struken it normally said brade could have flipped over and stabbed me, potentially killing ME, if I hadn’t been stabbing said tree on its third strike.
Three strikes to break a High Manganese steel sword. Shit is fraudulent NOT what is claimed to be. I already made it be for removal. They refused. It is still for sale to kill someone who buy’s said again.
If your buying swords off Amazon, you dun already goofed
Is this JP? How are those robot legs coming along?
I swear to God you people on lemmy (and reddit) just find a few isolated stories and pretend like it’s hard or dangerous to use Amazon lol.
I’ve ordered well over 50k over the years and have like two or three minor minor fuck ups. They are fantastic. That’s why they are popular.
I mean… even if it still works or hasn’t fucked up it’s still a cheap knockoff. The cheap knockoffs I get from Amazon usually work fine, but I don’t go there to find cheap knockoffs, I need a specific brand usually. Where I get frustrated is when I search for a specific item I need and I get a hundred cheap knockoffs listed first. Maybe other people don’t care, but I don’t want a genuine Sorny or Pantafonix.
I have never seen this. It just doesn’t happen that often on US Amazon stores. There entire thing, at least in the US, is over blown.
Literally just did this to prove it to you. I searched for “Wireless phone charger”. Something that’s not technical, that most people with wireless charging have at least thought about buying. First page is shown here. Feel free to point out any brands that you recognize.
I’ve tried 2 so far from amazon. Both garbage. 1 didn’t work out of the box and the other worked for about a month then crapped out. Amazon hosts just garbage now. I’ve gone back to buying from retail whenever possible.
After about 12 results I finally get to a brand name one, the Apple wireless charger here. So, I guess what I’m saying isn’t that offbrands are bad, I love buying third party stuff and modifying it. This isn’t that though, it’s cheap knockoff garbage where they manipulate the rankings and put their crap above anything that might actually be useful. The site is so flooded with this crap that it’s barely usable for me. (You can see I’m using extensions to help try to adjust the ratings too, because they also flood the reviews with fake garbage)
Nah, my search results look this like this. Even when I search for a specific brand, very rarely does that make it to the top of the list. Far more often than not, I have to go digging for what I want. It sounds like you have a different experience of Amazon and I honestly envy it. It used to be great
Works on my computer?
I used eBay for years buying everything from computers to expensive bikes. I even helped a friend who bought a car from eBay.
Now? Full of knock offs and scams. My last transactions were garbage designed to last long enough for a product photo shoot. Using any of these products for their intended purpose is a real safety risk and returns require a back and forth with automated systems designed to try to make you give up before you get any $$ back.
I haven’t used eBay in ~8 and likely never will again. The thing about critical mass and network effect is it has as much (if not more) of an impact during a service’s decline.
I think there are different aspects to it.
Amazon’s delivery service is better than ever. You get products in half the time, with less packaging, and fewer miles traveled to deliver it to you, without any significant increase in delivery fees.
Price is still competitive when you take into account delivery cost and speed. If you don’t care about those, Amazon isn’t the cheapest.
Search and reviews are down the tubes. It’s like Amazon no longer cares if their site is overrun with crap products as long as people are buying them.
Amazon still works great if you only buy name-brand products that are fulfilled by Amazon.
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🤷♂️
