[gcb0]

the retail side of Amazon is so sloppy. things like this. vendors much much worse than eBay for small items or sometimes even $600 smart phones...

it's the main reason i have never even considered AWS. I'm too conscious to depend on them.

[takno]

I'm no great fan of Amazon. I think they manage to spread a veneer of disappointment over everything they brand themselves. The intrusive android video app with mandatory free app store, the progressively worsening courier service, the insane difficulty of finding anything that's actually well-written on Kindle and the crazily annoying ads before the programs on Prime.

I really wouldn't lump AWS in with it though. As long as you follow the rules and double up on things or accept the pretty-rare downtime they are really offering a good service at a pretty good price point. Google are probably a little cheaper for most things right now, but that tends to run in 6 month cycles.

[pavel_lishin]

> it's the main reason i have never even considered AWS. I'm too conscious to depend on them.

What do you use instead?

[duaneb]

Amazon isn't the one perpetrating the scam here....

[msandford]

> Amazon isn't the one perpetrating the scam here....

Not directly perpetrating, but definitely enabling.

EDIT: Worse is that if you think about it, who is getting scammed? Is Amazon paying out more money by people doing all this crazy stuff with books? Probably not. So the scammers are scamming the real authors who aren't getting paid as much as they otherwise would for the real people who actually read their books.

Does Amazon have any obligation to ensure that pages read are real, or verified or whatever? Probably not. But it's definitely bad business, similar to how Google desperately needed to crack down on click bots for Google ads.

[duaneb]

I would say its relation to vendor management is shaky at best. I am also curious what you think they should be doing better--I certainly do not waste my time shopping elsewhere on the internet. There is no reason in most cases: it is easier to wait for sales than it is to bargain hunt because everyone else is just as bad as amazon.