[factorymoo]

I worked for Amazon for two years. They always were very proud of their customer obsession and in some ways it really showed (great customer service, very speedy deliveries).

But what I never understood is how it never seemed to be a problem that over the years, the site is just filled with low quality / alibaba imports / bad products.

On a side note, the number of vendors that offer you to remove a bad review in exchange for a full refund (and you get to keep the product) is also making me lose all trust in their review system.

Product idea: use reddit to obtain 3 price point options for all items deemed of high quality (or at least that people are happy with). Say cordless vacuum cleaners and have an extension in chrome that only displays these 3 options when you look up for this item in Amazon.

[ajkjk]

I worked on Amazon's fulfillment software a long time ago. Short version is: quality is an arms race between Amazon and a lot of _very-motivated_ cheaters, and Amazon is always behind. At least when I was there, they wanted to fix stuff, but only in an "cost-effective, at-scale, multi-year-project" kind of way, rather than the simple obvious solution of "throw lots of people at the problem until it goes away". My guess is that they're somewhat more worried now as tides have shifted away from their reputability, but they're nevertheless probably in like year 3 of a ten-year plan at the moment.

[thesuitonym]

It's past time to stop recommending Reddit, not because of the recent shenanigans, but because it's already been a few years at least that Reddit has been filled with marketing spam, fake accounts, and astroturfing.

[paxys]

Amazon changed from being a marketplace for high quality products to being a marketplace for their own products while also allowing some cheap junk to boost their numbers. Just open the site and see the prominent categories – Amazon clinic, Amazon Fresh & Whole Foods grocery delivery, One Medical, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Music, Prime Gaming, Echo & Alexa, Fire Tablets, Fire TV, Kindle, Audible... There's really no high quality third party retail over there anymore because manufacturers can now easily ship on their own and avoid Amazon's massive cut.