As someone with 2200 purchase on amazon over the last several years, you're definitely wrong. I have to use every trick up my sleeve to not get pure hot alibaba trash. It USED to be that amazon best seller items were good at least, and now those are an absolute trash garbage fest as well too. Go try to buy a strainer, charger, literally any appliance, anything, and tell me you get good results.
I recently bought Amazon's best seller hot oil frier. When we turned it on, the cheap thin metal of it bent from the heat so that the hot oil dripped on the floor. Turns out it was straight from a Chinese noname brand but marked as "sold by Amazon" on the website. When I tried to refund it, they told me that Amazon had just purchased the items for resale and that I should contact the original manufacturer for warranty. And they gave me a Guangdong address and a Gmail email.
By now every product listing on Amazon should be treated like SEO spam.
Plus there's now all these sellers trying to buy a 5 star review by promising a gift card. I recently saw a baby carriage with lots of 5 star reviews from teenagers who tried it out with plush toys because they didn't have kids yet.
They did give in and give me a refund eventually. It's just that I was surprised by their laissez-faire attitude that their topseller was some random no-name factory in China.
Attorney General would still be interested in the fact that you were sold a deep fryer with such a potentially dangerous flaw by Amazon, and the run around they initially gave you.
They really are like low quality SEO blog spam. I can't believe how many products I see with almost all 5 star ratings...for a completely different product.
Yes, I actually quite literally fear for my life from factory chemicals or defects. A few years ago I saw a charger that was amazon's "best seller" and it had tons of 1 star reviews of peoples houses catching on fire...
I once ordered a USB charger from Amazon that said you needed to have 3m of empty space in every direction to avoid the fire risk. I just wondered how anyone could satisfy that and put the charger into a wooden cupboard. Maybe I should revise that decision now :/
Yes, I would for your safety with anything even remotely dangerous, like electronics (I watch out even with a strainer which is just steel, but can be covered in loads of carcinogenic chemicals from china etc).
I recently just got fooled again, I needed to buy a cooking butane torch for grilling cheese. The "best seller" was quite nice looking, had great reviews, great photos.
I actually got it in my hand and it essentially fell apart. I immediately threw it in the trash as there's no way I'm putting highly flammable gas into this junk. I went to a head shop and bought one for the exact same price with amazing quality... its funny how we started out with brick and mortar, migrated to online... and now I'm going to start migrating back to brick and mortar.
I didnt mention anything about amazon's inclination to fix it. I said that it's pure garbage on amazon and it takes an astronomical amount of work to find NOT trash, and even after this many orders I still get fooled when using all the fake review spot apps, etc.
It's impossible by design to find "the good stuff."
Even when purchasing from "legitimate" product pages, they'll send you co-mingled counterfeits. You have absolutely no assurance that what you're buying is legitimate.
I think it's often impossible to distinguish whether something is good on amazon. For many products there are often 100 chinese clones with fake brand names and suspect reviews. I only use amazon now when I need something specific and if I know it will be difficult to find elsewhere. Specifically for PC and tech products, I've actually found best buy is great these days at stocking popular stuff at about the same price as amazon.
what’s a category of good that Amazon excels at where they are the dominant seller e.g. where the search term has not been gamed by a dozen marketplace sellers?
even with Amazon as the direct seller I don’t find them to be cheaper than other stores for almost anything. it’s really only when the pricing is competitive and directly from them where it makes sense to buy given convenience of fast shipping if you have Prime.
the only thing I can think of is their own private label, but even there it seems extremely hit or miss just reading some of the reviews - sounds like everything is just sourced from bottom of barrel Chinese manufacturers that slap an Amazon logo on things.
I don’t think there is a category where amazon shines, but I have had good results with car parts, gardening supplies, tools, books, household items.
I usually find a brand name seller with a website or a specific part number.
Or if I don’t know/care about a brand I read some reviews and look at review pictures I don’t buy the cheapest item and still scrutinize best selling item.
The top results could be garbage as people are saying, but somewhere in the first page of top rated results is the best item for a great price.
In a rural place, prime is a huge time and money saver, have had good customer service. I still don’t think other online retailers have caught up to amazon, I hope they do .
I agree with you completely. I've yet to have a shoddy counterfeit product with thousands of purchases over a decade. Any actual problems are also solved within minutes.
Can someone link a product listing that they received a counterfeit from?
"HIFI Audio Decoder Amplifier - Aimpire AD10 MINI USB DAC CSS XMOS XU208 ES9018K2M OPA2134 Audio Amplifier Decoder"
This is a fake. Strange how the URL says TOPPING but the product is from "Aimpire". Aimpire has been photoshopped into some, but not all of the product pictures (where TOPPING is still visible in a few).
Turns out that Aimpire has had a contentious relationship with Topping (the designer and manufacturer of the real thing), started making their own (inferior and unlicensed) versions of the Topping product.
Looks like this one is "sold by amazon.com". Huh. Guess it slipped by their counterfeit checkers.
This is a strange case. The reviews seem to say people are buying the Topping product but getting the Aimpire product. But if you buy from this page, you're knowingly purchasing the Aimpire version. Are people buying Topping from another listing and getting this?
EDIT: never mind, looks like this product used to say Topping and was changed, and that's why the URL is still the original wording. That's clearly a scam then.