Amazon is the new Walmart. Low quality products. Increasingly the top brands aren't even available on the site and all you have is Chinese no-name crap.
For me its even worse than Walmart. No matter how shitty it is, at least I know what I'm getting at there.
With Amazon its pretty much a gamble whether or not I'm getting what I actually ordered or some cheap knock-off crap.
For the entirety of quarantine I've been ordering directly from companies and its saved a lot of headache, sure theres no 2-day shipping, but I'm no longer receiving a fake Anker charger four times in a row.
Quarantine has also taught me Amazon is just terrible at handling some stuff. I ordered a new French press from them, which came broken both times. Ordered from Crate & Barrel and it came wrapped and packaged beautifully. Special bubble wrap with creased edges for folding to the contours of the box, and a box that actually fit the product (as opposed to Amazon: "let's toss this in a box 3 times the size of the item, with 3 squares of inflated plastic. Surely nothing bad will happen as it bangs around in there.") I'll never order any glassware or glass products from Amazon again.
And before I tried Crate & Barrel I actually was making excuses for Amazon. "Well, shipping glass and ceramic is hard. I knew there was a chance it would break in shipping." Still valid concerns, but easier to stomach a bad experience when it shows they put forth effort and thought.
Yeah, I'll use them as a last resort but going to B&M retailers or even walmart online is working real well for me. Free shipping online if you spend more than a certain amount a lot of the time.
I've been shopping online directly lately and the service and shipping times have been phenomenal. It's almost as though Amazon and small ecommerce shops have swapped places when it comes to quality assurance, service and shipping times.
What you’re describing has been Amazon for at least a decade and it’s transparently what they offer and how they market themselves, so the Walmart comparison is not even necessary.
If you are using Amazon to find top premium brands / products, you’re shopping in the wrong place to begin with.
I think it's worse than Walmart. At Walmart you get cheap garbage for low prices. At Amazon you have cheap garbage for high prices because masquerading as a premium brand with high prices and drop shipping from (ex:) AliExpress is super lucrative if you can corner a market.
Amazon knowingly sells tons of products that maim or children, and refuses to take them down even when reported. I literally saw an Amazon recommended product the other day where the #1 review was that it gave the person's kid lead poisoning. Even at it's worst Wal-Mart wasn't that bad.
At this point brand names seem to be very weak indicators of value, except a few exceptions in a specific niches with exclusive technology.
Most brands that get any traction seem to abuse that halo to also shove mediocre product to the middle/lower market. In the end we still need to do a ton of research to see which product is individually good, and looking at reviews is a way better indicator than brand marketing.
I hit this issue when trying to buy a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps it would be different if I was willing to pay a grand for the top of the line, but otherwise house name brands had at most mediocre reviews, often with documented cheaping out on important parts. We had to go through video reviews of each specific model of the price range targeted to get a decent idea of what we were buying.
I've been trying to find a decent webcam for a while now on Amazon, if you want prime and not ridiculously over priced it's all no name off brands. Really frustrating.
With Amazon its pretty much a gamble whether or not I'm getting what I actually ordered or some cheap knock-off crap.
For the entirety of quarantine I've been ordering directly from companies and its saved a lot of headache, sure theres no 2-day shipping, but I'm no longer receiving a fake Anker charger four times in a row.