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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I tried to find replacement shoelaces locally and none of the shoe stores in a 20-mile radius had any at all. Not the big chains, not the independent places, nothing. My only option was to buy them online.
> It really feels like people's behaviors have been permanently changed for the worst
I recently spent a year in Shanghai, and when I would ask a friend where to go to buy something I needed, the response was always a confused "buy it online and have it delivered".
I don't care for that. I'd like to have things available in stores.
Here in Germany, you used to be able to buy chemicals at pharmacies. Then, the EU plus the usual German compliance-by-the-letter came along... the EU imposed serious controls on chemicals because many can be used to make bombs (e.g. acetone plus hydrogen peroxide yields APEX/TATP) or various illicit drugs. That legislation now not just requires a bullshit amount of paperwork for each transaction but also requires pharmacy staff to pass and renew a certification for dealing with chemicals. No, the actual doctor in pharmaceuticals that one needs to pass to open a pharmacy is not enough.
As a result, nearly all pharmacies here dropped the entire lines of making medication on-site and selling chemicals, because only the latter kept the former financially viable.
So, your only options left are either: a) buy from Amazon or eBay sellers that outright don't care about the German peculiarities or b) if you manage to qualify, buy from the usual selection of lab supply wholesalers. But something like "start a German NileRed channel", that's completely out of the question. The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
Nile has even a masters in chemistry I think, and very likely at least a business entity. So might work. And even for him some things are hard to get, a Canada has similar restrictions.
I hear your pain about the legislation. It sounds like it sucks.
> The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
NileRed has a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology.
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.
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.
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.
Copyright law only restricts commercial activity, so if you print a Nintendo character on your shirt, to wear yourself, there's no means for Nintendo to sue you over it. File sharing lawsuits are not over users downloading content, but over users seeding it, which is on by default in most file sharing clients.
If you hire someone to print it on the shirt for you, and then distribute the shirt, you would be liable for copyright infringement, not the printer, because the printer isn't supplying the artwork, you are. It's no different than placing phone calls to perform an illegal activity. The phone provider isn't guilty, but you are.
If you order a custom shirt, and provide unlicensed copyrighted artwork, but don't distribute it, then no one is in a position to get in trouble.
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
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.
I think part of the problem is also that how prevalent it is varies wildly by where you are, and therefore which Amazon distribution centers you're hitting.
To elaborate - in NYC, I usually avoid ordering from Amazon for anything where it's cheap or something health-related, but even when I've sometimes given up finding it easily elsewhere and bought it there, it's not been, as far as I could tell, a counterfeit item.
That's not to say I can easily prove that or that I'm encouraging people to order from there, but I personally haven't encountered boxes full of things other than the intended item, or the like, and I would suspect the problem's prevalence varies heavily with volume (and thus, turnover) and location.
The issue w AMZ is the sku mixing. Two or more different batches of stuff get mixed. A lot of the bad stuff are rejects or seconds that get the same packaging, so w Amz it is always a small chance.
Even without the mixing Amazon will occasionally have a "fire sale" on things sold by themselves or 3rd party stores and every time this happens the recent reviews are that the product was expired, or used, or damaged, etc. Even for products where returns aren't accepted which just adds insult to injury. For example this seems to be the case with air friers (only because I had my eye on this) every Prime Day, they all get flooded with dozens of reviews that the product was used.
I don't trust Amazon offers because of this. So I either just buy the super cheap, disposable stuff where a trip to a shop isn't worth it, or things that I can buy from Amazon, with guaranteed free returns. And to be clear, sometimes I'd rather order online because I have a guaranteed window to test and return if it's not good. For purchases in person the law here doesn't guarantee a return window for products that work but just aren't what I thought they'd be. Or i have to argue endlessly at the store for them to take it back.
In mass market stuff… Target. They sell stuff sourced through normal distributor channels and have a good shipping and pickup operation. Pricing is competitive.
Supplements are a scam industry, so you’re always going to have issues there, that’s a feature of the business.
100% Americans are complicit in making amazon the beheomoth they are. Convenience above all else. Ive shopped online for 20 years and never purchesed from Amazon. There are very few things that cant be bought form other e-vendors. Its just that they wont turn up next day.
Amazon perpetuates the stealing of IP to the point that they are the global leader. They use their market power to steal anything that makes money. Whether its directly, or indirectly as above.
Lately Wal-Mart has been going head-to-head with AMZN on its own turf. They've got their own version of Amazon Prime, and many of the same third party sellers of the same questionable supplements and other things. Next day shipping seems to operate pretty much the same between the two as well.
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.
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.
As long as they don't commingle inventory it's relatively easy to avoid (not sure if that's the case or not, but seems like most of the 3rd party sellers do their own shipping)
FWIW my main annoyance with Walmarts website is that it's not clear if you package is coming via shipping service like FedEx, who has access to my apartment complex, or just some dude in his car who needs to call me while I'm at work to be buzzed in
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.
> 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.
In case there are readers who don't know who Clifford Stoll is, he's the author of The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, that was practically required reading if you were a programmer or hacker in the early 1990s.
I didn't understand how hijacking worked on Amazon until I read this lucid explanation. Clearly he's still a great writer.
He's on Hacker News as CliffStoll. This makes me wonder how Hacker News deals with someone registering a famous person's name if they are not that person? I'm guessing that it's not a big problem here on HN because there's nothing being sold.
The first time I lived in Italy, back in the mid nineties, with expensive phone service and no home internet connection... I had a copy of that book and I think I read it like 10 times.
This is amazing. I was literally reading the 3rd chapter of the book "Machine Beauty" in bed, saw the baby Clifford Stoll mentioned and looked it up because it sounded familiar. Of course I've seen the beautiful glass bottles here on HN before, so I went back to my book. After putting it down and hopping on HN, of course I see an article referencing this exact topic! Such a small world.
I think that was the book that I read on my Palm Pilot. But it's been a while.
I had the klein stein at one point, but got rid of it when downsizing. It was hard to clean, so not practical for drinking, and not as pretty on the shelf as a classic klein bottle. I'd recommend one of those if you're thinking of getting one.
The "Acme Klein Bottle Wine Bottle" is incredible. It strongly reminds me of Jacques Carelman's "Catalogue d'objets introuvables" (1969) [translated as "Catalog of fantastic things", 1971 by Ballantine Books in New York].
As wikipedia states:
> Carelman is best known for his Catalog of fantastic things (Catalogue d'objets introuvables) also known as Catalogue of Unfindable Objects, made in 1969 as a parody of the catalog of the French mail order company Manufrance. This work has been translated into 19 languages (including Korean, Hebrew and Finnish). Among these imaginary objects are, for instance, a "Kangaroo gun" whose "barrel is extensively studied ... to give the bullet a sinusoidal trajectory which follows the animal in its leaps", or a disposable "Plaster anvil ... (sold by the dozen) to be discarded after use, allowing you to make substantial savings." The most famous item in this catalog was Carelman's "Coffeepot for Masochists", a coffeepot with a backwards facing spout that would scald the user. This design became a symbol for the critique of everyday things and was featured on the cover of Don Norman's book on the topic, The Design of Everyday Things.
(I didn't make the connection with Don Norman's book, another, more serious, classic).
The cause is the same, the solution is the same: when companies become so big and capture so much market share that they no longer are responsive to the needs of their customers, it's time for them to be destroyed. Amazon should be dismantled into dozens or even hundreds of small companies and all its assets distributed among them.
if these comments are any indication, our inability to handle mild inconvenience and a lifetime of consumerist conditioning are the real reasons amazon can continue to get away with being cartoonishly awful.
I get it, there's a lot of crap in life and sometimes it seems like it's just not worth the hassle to make something a bit unpleasant for the sake of your principles when there's crap at work and the mortgage is due and timmy is failing english class again but they will not stop unless being shitty starts hurting their business and we cannot count on the captured regulators to do that on our behalf.
It’s not that we don’t have an inability to deal with small inconveniences; we haven’t the time and resources to compete with those who are faster because they tolerate monopolies and anticompetitive actors.
This stuff seems to keep happening and the problem seems to be that it is ungovernable. How is someone supposed to fight this if they are not half as famous as Cliff?
I dropped mine because frankly, you don't get much from it anymore. Pricing is often identical and frankly, you can just go to the store's site and 99% of the time get the same price
Look for other suppliers. For everything I'm interested in I can find some small shop that has real reviews and advice. it takes a little effort to find them but they know their product and so it is worth finding them-
I do mostly but off Amazon but that doesn't mean I don't understand that until more people do this these brands still have to be on amazon. You're kinda missing the point
That's the "This is the hill I die on" approach. From all the lawyers (family) I've talked to, this is such a massively large money and time sink, regardless of outcome, that you should never do it, even if it means fraud goes unchecked.
Ianal, but afaik small claims are for purely money claims. I.e. you have to prove to judge/jury exact amount of your loss. It works well in case of fighting over debt. But more abstract damages are likely outside courts jurisdiction...
On the other hand... It is cheap to try and see what happens, as long as expectations are right.
I don't remember why I looked this up in Washington state, USA a while back (bad work by a plumber, I think) but here in WA I think there's also a rule/law that you can only take individuals to small claims court.
There's also a dollar limit ($4,000? Maybe 15 years ago?).
But yeah, by law you can't drag companies into small claims court. It's meant to settle minor things like your neighbor accidentally backing into (and damaging) your fence, etc.
Time and money, sure. But small claims in many (most? all?) regions are specifically designed to not require a lawyer. I think in some you specifically can’t bring one.
In most yeah, you need a special dispensation, and you probably just want normal civil court stuff then - its kinda the point of small claims to not need all the extra stuff.
Maybe he just do not advertise how vicious he is on twitter. It does not mean that he is not vicious. Probably is, like every other rich person. You are not getting rich by being kind.
First time - when you learning all the details - may be. But it wasn't that bad. I represented myself vs insurance company with the lawyer. I did not get full claim amount, and could do better, but I got more than what insurance wanted to settle for.
I honestly think sites like stockx where they open the package and verify before shipping it forward will overtake amazon despite the increased costs. Absolutely not invested in stockx in any way, just an opinion that was formed as follows;
Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for.
That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine.
The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point.
I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
I’ve never had a problem with buying on eBay, but I have received counterfeit products from Amazon. In one case, it was an electronic gadget that was using a counterfeit chip, so the real drivers wouldn’t work. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was.
Agreed. To add to this I often buy warehouse deals which is an order of magnitude more risky and the percentage of returns I've had to do is in the low single digits. Almost always it's an obviously brand new never opened product.
Personally, I don’t get anything for more than $50 from Amazon, and, usually, not even that.
Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again.
I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
It's for reasons like this people ask "what happened to regulatory oversight" because at this point, entities who occupy this much of the space appear to be essentially unregulated.
It's trading under false premises. It's misleading conduct. It's oligopoly. The sherman laws were designed for this surely?
I could say the same about appeals to google, apple, anyone for account recovery too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I tried to find replacement shoelaces locally and none of the shoe stores in a 20-mile radius had any at all. Not the big chains, not the independent places, nothing. My only option was to buy them online.
Rubbing alcohol is also cheap enough that the 'free shipping' is really just being included in the price.
> It really feels like people's behaviors have been permanently changed for the worst
I recently spent a year in Shanghai, and when I would ask a friend where to go to buy something I needed, the response was always a confused "buy it online and have it delivered".
I don't care for that. I'd like to have things available in stores.
Here in Germany, you used to be able to buy chemicals at pharmacies. Then, the EU plus the usual German compliance-by-the-letter came along... the EU imposed serious controls on chemicals because many can be used to make bombs (e.g. acetone plus hydrogen peroxide yields APEX/TATP) or various illicit drugs. That legislation now not just requires a bullshit amount of paperwork for each transaction but also requires pharmacy staff to pass and renew a certification for dealing with chemicals. No, the actual doctor in pharmaceuticals that one needs to pass to open a pharmacy is not enough.
As a result, nearly all pharmacies here dropped the entire lines of making medication on-site and selling chemicals, because only the latter kept the former financially viable.
So, your only options left are either: a) buy from Amazon or eBay sellers that outright don't care about the German peculiarities or b) if you manage to qualify, buy from the usual selection of lab supply wholesalers. But something like "start a German NileRed channel", that's completely out of the question. The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
Nile has even a masters in chemistry I think, and very likely at least a business entity. So might work. And even for him some things are hard to get, a Canada has similar restrictions.
I hear your pain about the legislation. It sounds like it sucks.
> The kind of stuff he buys, no way to get that without a commercial entity, and good luck getting that in place without at least a bachelor's degree in chemistry.
NileRed has a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology.
> 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.
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:
Boggled my mind that Amazon was okay with this.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.
Copyright law only restricts commercial activity, so if you print a Nintendo character on your shirt, to wear yourself, there's no means for Nintendo to sue you over it. File sharing lawsuits are not over users downloading content, but over users seeding it, which is on by default in most file sharing clients.
If you hire someone to print it on the shirt for you, and then distribute the shirt, you would be liable for copyright infringement, not the printer, because the printer isn't supplying the artwork, you are. It's no different than placing phone calls to perform an illegal activity. The phone provider isn't guilty, but you are.
If you order a custom shirt, and provide unlicensed copyrighted artwork, but don't distribute it, then no one is in a position to get in trouble.
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
I would barely trust Amazon for authentic shampoo never mind vitamins. Are people so desperate to save single dollars they gamble with their health?
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.
I think part of the problem is also that how prevalent it is varies wildly by where you are, and therefore which Amazon distribution centers you're hitting.
To elaborate - in NYC, I usually avoid ordering from Amazon for anything where it's cheap or something health-related, but even when I've sometimes given up finding it easily elsewhere and bought it there, it's not been, as far as I could tell, a counterfeit item.
That's not to say I can easily prove that or that I'm encouraging people to order from there, but I personally haven't encountered boxes full of things other than the intended item, or the like, and I would suspect the problem's prevalence varies heavily with volume (and thus, turnover) and location.
The issue w AMZ is the sku mixing. Two or more different batches of stuff get mixed. A lot of the bad stuff are rejects or seconds that get the same packaging, so w Amz it is always a small chance.
Even without the mixing Amazon will occasionally have a "fire sale" on things sold by themselves or 3rd party stores and every time this happens the recent reviews are that the product was expired, or used, or damaged, etc. Even for products where returns aren't accepted which just adds insult to injury. For example this seems to be the case with air friers (only because I had my eye on this) every Prime Day, they all get flooded with dozens of reviews that the product was used.
I don't trust Amazon offers because of this. So I either just buy the super cheap, disposable stuff where a trip to a shop isn't worth it, or things that I can buy from Amazon, with guaranteed free returns. And to be clear, sometimes I'd rather order online because I have a guaranteed window to test and return if it's not good. For purchases in person the law here doesn't guarantee a return window for products that work but just aren't what I thought they'd be. Or i have to argue endlessly at the store for them to take it back.
In mass market stuff… Target. They sell stuff sourced through normal distributor channels and have a good shipping and pickup operation. Pricing is competitive.
Supplements are a scam industry, so you’re always going to have issues there, that’s a feature of the business.
100% Americans are complicit in making amazon the beheomoth they are. Convenience above all else. Ive shopped online for 20 years and never purchesed from Amazon. There are very few things that cant be bought form other e-vendors. Its just that they wont turn up next day.
Amazon perpetuates the stealing of IP to the point that they are the global leader. They use their market power to steal anything that makes money. Whether its directly, or indirectly as above.
Aren’t vitamins a crapshoot anywhere? I thought there was basically no regulations on any of it.
Lately Wal-Mart has been going head-to-head with AMZN on its own turf. They've got their own version of Amazon Prime, and many of the same third party sellers of the same questionable supplements and other things. Next day shipping seems to operate pretty much the same between the two as well.
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.
It doesn't hurt that Amazon can leverage economies of scale which are orders of magnitude greater than their utterly deficient competitors
In these cases, it does hurt.
Walmart.com is a rebranded Jet.com. They've only owned it for 9 years.
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.
And they have the same problems because they allow third party sellers. So far, Target seems it hasn't gone done this rode yet.
As long as they don't commingle inventory it's relatively easy to avoid (not sure if that's the case or not, but seems like most of the 3rd party sellers do their own shipping)
FWIW my main annoyance with Walmarts website is that it's not clear if you package is coming via shipping service like FedEx, who has access to my apartment complex, or just some dude in his car who needs to call me while I'm at work to be buzzed in
Walmart is Walmart. They hire the cheapest people possible and treat them like shit.
I get stuff from Walmart all of the time from their delivery drivers. The catch: I’ve never ordered anything from Walmart.
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.
Try Target.com
> 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.
In case there are readers who don't know who Clifford Stoll is, he's the author of The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, that was practically required reading if you were a programmer or hacker in the early 1990s.
I didn't understand how hijacking worked on Amazon until I read this lucid explanation. Clearly he's still a great writer.
He's on Hacker News as CliffStoll. This makes me wonder how Hacker News deals with someone registering a famous person's name if they are not that person? I'm guessing that it's not a big problem here on HN because there's nothing being sold.
The first time I lived in Italy, back in the mid nineties, with expensive phone service and no home internet connection... I had a copy of that book and I think I read it like 10 times.
His NOVA episode on the same subject is worth a watch as well https://youtu.be/Xe5AE-qYan8
I think most younger readers will be familiar through his videos on the Numberphile YouTube channel.
This is amazing. I was literally reading the 3rd chapter of the book "Machine Beauty" in bed, saw the baby Clifford Stoll mentioned and looked it up because it sounded familiar. Of course I've seen the beautiful glass bottles here on HN before, so I went back to my book. After putting it down and hopping on HN, of course I see an article referencing this exact topic! Such a small world.
I think that was the book that I read on my Palm Pilot. But it's been a while.
I had the klein stein at one point, but got rid of it when downsizing. It was hard to clean, so not practical for drinking, and not as pretty on the shelf as a classic klein bottle. I'd recommend one of those if you're thinking of getting one.
Wow! One of my all time favorite books and authors and the reason I got into this field. Thanks for that info.
>how Hacker News deals with someone registering a famous person's name
I registered as britneyspears, but dang got mad and made me change it. :(
I thought the absurdity of Britney being on HN was amusing.
Say it aint so. I learned all about lasers from Britney.
https://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm
You'd think an ENCOM representative would be allowed to have whatever name they wanted.
Reminder that there's also a film/dramatization/documentary of the events from the cuckoo's egg, with Cliff playing himself.
"The KGB, the Computer, and Me".
It can be found online, and it's worth a watch just because of him.
The man exudes good humor and niceness.
The "Acme Klein Bottle Wine Bottle" is incredible. It strongly reminds me of Jacques Carelman's "Catalogue d'objets introuvables" (1969) [translated as "Catalog of fantastic things", 1971 by Ballantine Books in New York].
As wikipedia states:
> Carelman is best known for his Catalog of fantastic things (Catalogue d'objets introuvables) also known as Catalogue of Unfindable Objects, made in 1969 as a parody of the catalog of the French mail order company Manufrance. This work has been translated into 19 languages (including Korean, Hebrew and Finnish). Among these imaginary objects are, for instance, a "Kangaroo gun" whose "barrel is extensively studied ... to give the bullet a sinusoidal trajectory which follows the animal in its leaps", or a disposable "Plaster anvil ... (sold by the dozen) to be discarded after use, allowing you to make substantial savings." The most famous item in this catalog was Carelman's "Coffeepot for Masochists", a coffeepot with a backwards facing spout that would scald the user. This design became a symbol for the critique of everyday things and was featured on the cover of Don Norman's book on the topic, The Design of Everyday Things.
(I didn't make the connection with Don Norman's book, another, more serious, classic).
The cause is the same, the solution is the same: when companies become so big and capture so much market share that they no longer are responsive to the needs of their customers, it's time for them to be destroyed. Amazon should be dismantled into dozens or even hundreds of small companies and all its assets distributed among them.
if these comments are any indication, our inability to handle mild inconvenience and a lifetime of consumerist conditioning are the real reasons amazon can continue to get away with being cartoonishly awful.
I get it, there's a lot of crap in life and sometimes it seems like it's just not worth the hassle to make something a bit unpleasant for the sake of your principles when there's crap at work and the mortgage is due and timmy is failing english class again but they will not stop unless being shitty starts hurting their business and we cannot count on the captured regulators to do that on our behalf.
This frames it as a failing of consumers.
It’s not that we don’t have an inability to deal with small inconveniences; we haven’t the time and resources to compete with those who are faster because they tolerate monopolies and anticompetitive actors.
This stuff seems to keep happening and the problem seems to be that it is ungovernable. How is someone supposed to fight this if they are not half as famous as Cliff?
My prime subscription expires this week. Perhaps the correct response to this systemic incompetence is to simply no longer give them money.
I dropped mine because frankly, you don't get much from it anymore. Pricing is often identical and frankly, you can just go to the store's site and 99% of the time get the same price
Look for other suppliers. For everything I'm interested in I can find some small shop that has real reviews and advice. it takes a little effort to find them but they know their product and so it is worth finding them-
I do mostly but off Amazon but that doesn't mean I don't understand that until more people do this these brands still have to be on amazon. You're kinda missing the point
What is the point? How do you think people should fight back against this?
Take them to small claims court for each violation.
That's the "This is the hill I die on" approach. From all the lawyers (family) I've talked to, this is such a massively large money and time sink, regardless of outcome, that you should never do it, even if it means fraud goes unchecked.
Even small claims?
Ianal, but afaik small claims are for purely money claims. I.e. you have to prove to judge/jury exact amount of your loss. It works well in case of fighting over debt. But more abstract damages are likely outside courts jurisdiction...
On the other hand... It is cheap to try and see what happens, as long as expectations are right.
I don't remember why I looked this up in Washington state, USA a while back (bad work by a plumber, I think) but here in WA I think there's also a rule/law that you can only take individuals to small claims court.
There's also a dollar limit ($4,000? Maybe 15 years ago?).
But yeah, by law you can't drag companies into small claims court. It's meant to settle minor things like your neighbor accidentally backing into (and damaging) your fence, etc.
10k limit in WA, and you definitely can sue businesses/corps in small claims.
Using your infinite time and money for legal representation to run a large number of legal cases in parallel?
Time and money, sure. But small claims in many (most? all?) regions are specifically designed to not require a lawyer. I think in some you specifically can’t bring one.
In most yeah, you need a special dispensation, and you probably just want normal civil court stuff then - its kinda the point of small claims to not need all the extra stuff.
Please cite a single example of that ever solving this problem.
Take who to small claims court? Amazon?
Yes. They no-show and you get a default judgement.
Why would they no-show?
They're far more likely to throw a couple hundred bucks at a local lawyer to show up.
I’m not sure it’s wise to fuck with the legal department of a trillion dollar company even if you’re in the right.
"Don't fight back when we fuck you or we'll ruin you".
The bigger the company, the heavier the penalties for fuckery should be. They should be the ones to live in fear, not the "little people".
While I agree with you, good luck lobbying for that one.
Bezos is thankfully not Elon, he won’t seek vengeance on you for literal nickels and dimes.
Maybe he just do not advertise how vicious he is on twitter. It does not mean that he is not vicious. Probably is, like every other rich person. You are not getting rich by being kind.
No, but making an example of you isn’t a bad business move.
Small claims is such a huge headache, though. It's far more expensive for anyone person than the company.
First time - when you learning all the details - may be. But it wasn't that bad. I represented myself vs insurance company with the lawyer. I did not get full claim amount, and could do better, but I got more than what insurance wanted to settle for.
I honestly think sites like stockx where they open the package and verify before shipping it forward will overtake amazon despite the increased costs. Absolutely not invested in stockx in any way, just an opinion that was formed as follows;
Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for.
That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point.
Overall I have a higher level of trust in Ebay purchases than Amazon purchases.
> They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine.
The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point.
I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
I’ve never had a problem with buying on eBay, but I have received counterfeit products from Amazon. In one case, it was an electronic gadget that was using a counterfeit chip, so the real drivers wouldn’t work. They did nothing to remedy the situation. Customer service didn’t even understand what my problem was.
It wasn't a USB to RS232 converter was it? Those are notorious for the knock-offs filling the market and not working with the "real" driver.
Agreed. To add to this I often buy warehouse deals which is an order of magnitude more risky and the percentage of returns I've had to do is in the low single digits. Almost always it's an obviously brand new never opened product.
Personally, I don’t get anything for more than $50 from Amazon, and, usually, not even that.
Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again.
I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
It's for reasons like this people ask "what happened to regulatory oversight" because at this point, entities who occupy this much of the space appear to be essentially unregulated.
It's trading under false premises. It's misleading conduct. It's oligopoly. The sherman laws were designed for this surely?
I could say the same about appeals to google, apple, anyone for account recovery too.
Cliff is awesome. The care and effort he shows rivals most Etsy sellers. (I have a Klein mug and gifted several more.)
(2021)
Past discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27684807
If some dev from Amazon reading this on HN doesn't raise this to a high level asap, you're all useless /s
No but seriously, that's Cliff Stoll they're messin with.
They did, 4 years ago, by responding to that post, it is in the last part of the text.
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