[KVFinn]

>Google has been regularly losing marketshare to Amazon because people perform searches for products directly there when previously it was done through google-search.

Ironically Amazon has been so aggressive with the ads recently I've lost all trust in searching on Amazon itself. I'm back to using Google to find the Amazon product page.

On Amazon I search for a specific brand and model and it's on page 4, buried until endless sponsored products. I have to go my order history to find the product page now. Sometimes the Amazon search is not just all endless products but literally incorrect products, stuff that I would have to return if I bought it by accident. Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

Amazon product search feels not just bad but actively hostile, something I have to fight against to find the thing I actually want.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

This exact thing happened to me. One of the problems, was that the bulb I was looking at, had a specific mini-candelabra socket, and the ones they showed me, had one that was just slightly larger, but looked almost identical (and the name was also “mini candelabra”). This was one of those “recommendations,” in the list at the bottom.

I actually ordered the wrong bulbs, based on this, and had to return them.

I have also had Amazon direct me to gray market and counterfeit goods, with extreme confidence; often insisting that the dodgy product was being sold by the manufacturer.

I now order direct from the manufacturer, for anything over about $50, even if I pay more (happens less frequently, these days. Amazon is no longer the bargain it used to be, and even gray market now sells for full retail). Sometimes, the manufacturers use Amazon for fulfillment, but I don’t mind, as they direct me to the real product.

It’s not 100% Amazon’s fault, as the scammers have figured out how to game the system, but Amazon is not trying to fix it. I assume that this is because they make so much money.

I have heard, anecdotally, that selling on Amazon has become a nightmare, for legit sellers; especially small ones. The scammers have no problem, putting up with B.S., but real sellers can drown.

Here’s something I experienced, a couple of years ago, when I was looking for a stand for my phone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25582762 (the links in that post no longer do what they did, back then).

[bombcar]

Amazon is rapidly dropping to my second or third place to look, I often start at Home Depot or Best Buy or other places without a marketplace first, then only sanity check Amazon to make sure I can't save somehow.

Same thing happened to eBay, any attempt to cut down on the scammers just reduced the number of actual real sellers, until basically there's nothing but scammers left for large swaths of the site.

[Marsymars]

Best Buy is at least toying with the idea of a marketplace - Best Buy Canada search returns mostly marketplace items, but for now at least you can still filter to only items sold by Best Buy.

[wyre]

I’m constantly purchasing things from sellers on eBay and have no run-ins with scammers.

[bombcar]

eBay is still quite usable if you know what you're doing, and "scammers" here isn't referring to actual "ship you a brick instead of a laptop" but "water down search results with acres and acres of cheap Alibaba shit"

Which is sometimes exactly what people want.

[ClumsyPilot]

> The Amazon search is no... literally incorrect products, stuff that I would have to return if I bought it by accident. Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

People keep going on about AI but the worlds most valuable company is incapable of arranging shit they sell into correct categories. You could be looming for a toothbrush and they will sell you a car seat.

Alza.cz delivers all over EU, they have an actual human categorise their stock, and it's a much better experience.

They don't sell absolutely everything, but they have electronics, Scooters, teslas, home appliances - you name it.

[brandon272]

> Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

This is where ads really break the user experience. When I search for a specific air filter by model number it will prioritize ads for different air filters above the listings of air filters that are actually compatible.

Checking out on Amazon is easy. Everything else from the searching to the filtering to the reviews is openly user hostile.

[mrDmrTmrJ]

Strongly agree. Dropped prime after I Amazon adds mean I couldn't find what I wanted. Now use google to find specific stuff on D2C websites (probably Shopify) and spend less. It's great!

[thaumasiotes]

I dropped prime after "two-day shipping on all orders" had degenerated into "we'll deliver it when we feel like it, and you can't get two-day shipping even if you're willing to pay extra for it".

[fortituded0002]

My favorite is when I buy something from Prime and it says two day delivery once it ships in two weeks.

[flangola7]

What even is Prime without faster shipping?

[nostromo]

A bad spinoff of Lord of the Rings nobody watched..?

I wish this was a joke, but they did increase the cost of prime to pay for that trash, rather than focusing on what people really use Prime for.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/ama...

[jjeaff]

I'm annoyed that they keep raising the price to pay for a streaming service I barely use. But I still can get most things next day or two days at most.

And I very much enjoyed the Lord of the Rings series they did. High production quality and pretty good story telling. But I suppose I am easily entertained.

[mattlutze]

A tool to get you to do your browsing and shopping on Amazon, so that they can improve your buyer profile and sell it across their network.

[miked85]

Prime Video, though that isn't worth the cost.

[account42]

Prime Video is the reason I never got prime. Was using it free for a year as a student end when that expired I considered signing up for the free shipping. But then they bundled the Delivery-Prime with the video streaming service which doubled the price if you are not interested in video streaming.

[thaumasiotes]

It also used to stop you from seeing ads on Twitch. Not anymore.

[mschuster91]

> Like yesterday Amazon kept showing lightbulbs with the wrong physical socket size.

Amazon could improve their usability so much by providing proper metadata entry systems for sellers and enforce their proper usage by moderating their platform.

But that costs money, there are more than enough customers still buying stuff off of Amazon and the real cash cow is AWS anyway.

[bombcar]

The insane thing is just how much meta data you can (and have) to give them to list something, and then the search just goes and ignores it all.

[heisenbit]

I have the impression that the spam is crowding out the long tail of products and is also driving away some better products with a unique selling point.

[thfuran]

Why keep paying them?