[goldenkey]

Please don't act like Amazon is the only shop around. They are a terrible shop, actively adversarial to their merchants and customers. They are chock full of fake reviews, they comingle inventory, and practice many dark patterns.

Most people think that Amazon sells all the products on their site - because Amazon designs their site to look like it. Even young people who are technically literate are fooled. This results in a lot of harm..

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/08/amazons-plan-to-...

In actuality, eBay is more of a trustworthy marketplace than Amazon...

[meristohm]

Thanks for promoting other options. When recommending books I use worldcat.org links rather than the more-exploitative for-profit vendors.

In the interest of making more art available to more people, independent of spending-money, I’d rather us collectively invest more in public libraries. To what degree do public libraries fund authors?

[goldenkey]

You're welcome. I am not sure but I agree, we need as much free information as possible. Libgen and scihub are invaluable! I don't know if libraries fund authors but that would certainly be a cool model to have.

[amrcnimgrnt]

But for the long tail, sometime they can't be beat.

Which sucks, because I otherwise have eliminated Amazon in my life.

[bserge]

Your effort is appreciated.

[goldenkey]

Thank you. It's difficult to oppose such a large behemoth.

[willyt]

I just bought something from amazon and it turns out it was coming from a seller in another country and i had to pay an extra £24 in import duties and carrier charges. Nowhere on the listing did it say it was coming from outside the UK.

[goldenkey]

I am sorry to hear that. Amazon's UI is purposely designed to make it difficult to notice this kind of information. Buyers are lulled into a false sense of assuredness.

Listings are often even hijacked!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27684807

(And Amazon couldn't care less!)

[willyt]

Quite and apparently everyone else thinks I deserved it for some reason! Fairly standard makita accessory, none of FFXtools, Axminster, Toolstop or even eBay had it in stock only place that came up in search was amazon. It was out of stock on amazon but was advertised in the side bar as available through a third party seller by the name of something like 'KAMAC Machine Tools' i.e. an english sounding name. If I'd investigated the company I would have found that they were in Italy, but the price was listed in Sterling and there was no text anywhere that led me to believe that this was an import. I know because I went back and screengrabbed the page after I got the bill from UPS. Its not worth my time to pursue it any further with Amazon, Startup Idea: an AI chatbot that I can deploy to argue with their AI chatbot about this.

[goldenkey]

HN downvotes 90% of my comments. I wouldn't take it to heart. It's not common for the herd mentality to do anything but pile on. Plus you have to keep in mind that many of the users here are employed by Amazon and are in perpetual self-denial of the unethical nature of their employer. The cognitive dissonance is necessary for them to avoid an actual understanding of how they enable it all, regardless of whatever division they may reside within ("I'm just an AWS dev. Pissing in bottles, what's that got to do with me?!!")

Then you factor in the astroturfing by contracted subsidiaries through shilled comments and votes/likes/dislikes all over the broader internet.

My advice is to get used to the downvotes. When there are few comments but many downvotes, it's pretty indicative of a poor attempt to suppress valid information. They have no counter arguments, just a supression button. Consider your task accomplished. ;-)

[brnt]

Didn't y'all vote for having extra tariffs a while back?