[steveBK123]

It's a shame eBay got their "marketplace" lunch eaten by Amazon.

I remember when shopping at eBay was sort of sketchy to normies and Amazon was the trusted retailer. In the intervening decade Amazon has done everything to dilute their marketplace to be as wild wild west with fake goods / junk / stolen good fencing / disappearing sellers no better than eBay.

[jvanderbot]

eBay remains the only reliable place to find good quality broken things, which is really important for reuse, repair of electronics.

It's also surprisingly good for niche items like a fan for a particular out of production CPU board.

A coworker once bought an old iMac to use to benchmark some satellite code because the old iMac and the RAD750 are pretty close (up to a factor 2 througout I guess). All eBay.

eBay is a national treasure.

[musictubes]

Indeed. It is possible to find particular vacuum tubes with specific construction on eBay as opposed to most dealers. Often times you spend more with eBay but at least you know what you are getting. eBay is the best place to find obscure items or even particular versions of obscure items.

[coffeebeqn]

As long as you buy from sellers with a decent history and non-fake reviews. And not but anything “too good to be true”. I bought a powerful mini PC for cheap from someone with hundreds of I guess fake reviews and got a keychain instead. They got fairly quickly banned and I got my money back

[faet]

I worked at a place that kept their legacy servers running through eBay parts.

The only reason they started migrating was because it started getting too expensive and hard to find old parts.

[lobsterthief]

You can also get a lot of open-box stuff (like smarthome items) for much cheaper than on Amazon

[delichon]

> marketplace to be as wild wild west with fake goods / junk / stolen good fencing / disappearing sellers no better than eBay.

My home is half full of things from flea markets where all of the above apply a lot. Yet they're still a great place to shop with caveat emptor shields on high.

Amazon has just become the biggest best flea market ever and the other half of my things are from there. So while all you say is true it is still a tremendous value to me. Sure you can't trust the sellers. So I don't, and it still works over all.

[readyplayernull]

At least you can personaly inspect an item before buying it in a flea market. Last time I bought a tablet in Amazon the seller sent the right box with a completely different cheap product inside that had no serial number anywhere. Since the serial is absolutely required there was no way to return this thing. I left a 1 star polite review with pictures that was quickly removed with an automated message about "focusing too much on the seller", edited the review to remove any mention of the seller and it got quickly removed with no reason at all. What a great scam.

[delichon]

Unlike with flea markets, I've always been able to return such items bought from Amazon. They've never given me a hard time about it. That's happened frequently enough that I plan for it. I still don't like it of course. But if an Amazon-with-zero-scams opened up I'd only be willing to pay a little more for that service.

[OJFord]

I try not to buy third-party shipped, and certainly wouldn't for something not very cheap. The returns/customer service experience is just so much worse, Amazon will eventually get involved (sounds like it didn't help in your case) but you have to suffer through it with the third-party and reach an impasse first.

And without painless returns, Amazon loses a lot of appeal (over the high street, John Lewis online, etc.) for me.

[JohnTHaller]

Even if you buy it from Amazon or a trusted third party, due to stock mixing, you can't guarantee it actually came from them.

[OJFord]

That's not relevant here, it doesn't affect the customer service; what does 'actually came from them' mean in the context of who is the seller in the transaction?

If somebody put something bad into the supposed-to-be-fungible warehouse pool, and I'm the unlucky recipient, then that's one example of where the better customer service comes into play.

If you buy sold by BESTWAREZ-FOR-U and despatched by Amazon, then you get it shipped from the same pool but crapper service when you get the same amount of unluck and receive the dodgy one. (And if it's despatched by them and you've not heard of them before, even crapper, and it probably won't take nearly as much unluck for it to pan out poorly in the first place.)

[latchkey]

> Since the serial is absolutely required there was no way to return this thing.

If you have prime, just contact support. My experience is that it is a fairly fast painless process and they either just credit you right there, or allow you to free return the item for credit.

[zepton]

Amazon was right to remove your review - product reviews are for reviews of the product. You never owned the product, so you can't review it.

You should have left a seller review (on the seller's Amazon page), not a product review.

[readyplayernull]

Not sure why you got downvoted, but I want the complain to be very visible, and I still got the product's box and manual, so I got a partial product?

[wraptile]

Not a shame at all when eBay still feels like 2004 but not in a good way. I'm honestly perplexed it's only 9% because it's such a terrible service in 2024. I recently tried to sell a small item on my >10 year old eBay account with loads of reputation and had to go through a dozens of KYC hoops and was still declined. Not to mention the ungodly UX.

[ryandvm]

For real. Recently re-activated my eBay account after 10 years to buy a relatively obscure item and amazingly it is almost exactly the same site that it was 20 years ago.

I guess there's something to be said for not chasing infinite growth, but eBay and Craigslist having their lunch eaten was entirely predictable. Not sure how many employees eBay has, but it feels like they could lay off 90% and nobody would notice. They're already coasting off the grid.

[M95D]

There are only two options these days: stay the same or enshittify. I prefer they stay the same. At least, exact term search still works.

[ChildOfChaos]

I am not sure Amazon has become as bad as everyone seems to suggest it is. I still buy from amazon frequently and never have a problem.

The thing with Amazon is there customer service is great, so if something does go wrong then you can sort it.

The other thing is to avoid the more dodgy looking listings and to buy only from amazon direct or shipped by Amazon and a fairly trusted brand.

Not sure if Amazon US is much worse than Amazon UK though. Ebay can be a bit more annoying to talk too, it takes much longer, amazon can be sorted in a quick 5 minute chat on there website.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> I still buy from amazon frequently and never have a problem.

> The other thing is to avoid the more dodgy looking listings and to buy only from amazon direct or shipped by Amazon and a fairly trusted brand.

Amazon's problem is that it commingles inventory in such a way that counterfeits get mixed with legitimate products across sellers. In light of which I have to ask why you think you've never been bitten (and keeping in mind that counterfeits aren't always obvious; ex. lead looks like any other metal)

[LeeroyWasHere]

They also obfuscate multiple sellers in a tucked away menu and sometimes you click the "seller" and it turns into search term, no seller profiles.

I've ordered two of the same product at the same time and received 1 out of 2...

The amount of fakes in certain niches is off the charts.

[OJFord]

That 'obfuscation' though is showing you the cheapest product+shipping price by default, even if Amazon-as-seller is not it (and is one of the slightly hidden more expensive ones).

Fair enough if you want the available sellers to be clearer, I'm just saying I think there's only good intentions there.

[ChildOfChaos]

It's pretty easy to see who the seller is.

If I am buying a big name product that is likely to have a counterfeit problem, the seller is usually going to be amazon direct or the manufacturer anyway as big products are stocked by Amazon directly, the stuff that isn't, is usually more generic or niche and not usually a type of product that matters since it's something fairly generic anyway, i.e a dish cloth, tape etc.

I am not sure if it's just less of an issue buying from Amazon UK or it's the type of stuff you are buying, but from what i've read it seems like it's mostly an Amazon US issue. Most things in the UK are not from third party sellers unless you are buying a generic item that is effectively dropped shipped from AliExpress like a fancy dress dinosaur costume.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Unless, of course, the supposed seller is irrelevant because Amazon just mixes up the real and fake items regardless: https://old.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/ifytxk/ysk_t...

[ChildOfChaos]

But for a lot of the items, the only sellers are official.

Look at the Apple Lightning cable, a typical fake product, here in the UK the only place you can get it from is amazon or amazon warehouse, so what products are there to get mixed up? Again, this seems to be more of an Amazon US issue, the reddit post you linked yet again just uses US sources.

I've not experienced this with Amazon, even when buying highly faked items, items that i have purchased from ebay however have been clearly fake. Sure I could have missed a fake product or two, but i've not been obviously scammed where it matters, but on ebay this has happened pretty much every time I buy a highly counterfeited product.

[paulmd]

Apple specifically has deals with Amazon such that Amazon is the only allowed seller and there is no third party inventory to commingle. Most brands do not do this, apple is an exception and has the clout to demand such an exception.

[IshKebab]

I'm pretty sure the level of counterfeits on Amazon varies massively by region. I'm in the UK and don't recall ever getting a counterfeit, and I buy ~1 thing per week from Amazon on average.

Actually I did get some Phillips LED bulbs that were a bit suss, but I'd still probably put my money on them being crap rather than counterfeit.

Counterfeits aren't always obvious but most are; if you've never seen any obvious counterfeits then it's unlikely you've missed high quality ones.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> I'm in the UK and don't recall ever getting a counterfeit

Again, how would you know? I know you think

> Counterfeits aren't always obvious but most are; if you've never seen any obvious counterfeits then it's unlikely you've missed high quality ones.

But the articles I've seen like https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-f... tend to lead with side-by-side pictures of visually identical products, which makes me think that's not true

[IshKebab]

Those don't look visually identical to me. With the possible exception of the tweezers the differences are pretty obvious.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

What's the difference in the gloves?

[jraby3]

Disagree.

I was buying a high end soap product from Amazon and when we used one from a hairstylist we realized ours were consistently fake.

Bottle and everything looked the same. But then we started buying direct from Dermalogica and it was clear the Amazon products are all fakes. Worst part is the store name on Amazon is Dermalogica products or something very similar to the real name.

[ChildOfChaos]

I am not sure, but if the store name was 'Dermalogica products' that would seem a bit dodgy straight away.

[jjav]

> I am not sure Amazon has become as bad as everyone seems to suggest it is. I still buy from amazon frequently and never have a problem.

Example, I bought a new high end camera on Amazon and what I received was a beat-up used camera with parts missing! Had to drive to a Whole Foods to return it and reorder the camera from a proper camera shop, wasting more than a week.

They also substitute junk quality for what was advertised as something else. I bought a power strip clearly advertised as UL Listed and what I received was some homegrown piece of junk that definitely was not. Threw that away taking the loss, not worth the drive to Whole Foods for a return.

At other times, I get the correct item. So you never know, Amazon is a probabilistic shopping site and the probability of getting what you ordered seems to be getting lower.

[steveBK123]

Very large % of stuff on Amazon US is 3rd party sellers.

There are plenty of reports of 3rd party sellers subbing in rebranded/relabelled goods like SSDs/HDDs/SD cards where you take a cheaps/low one and re-market it as a high speed high price one.

Agreed Amazon absolutely has great customer service for buyers.

[3D30497420]

I recently built a media-server so was purchasing HDDs. Every single online retailer I purchased from, including Amazon, delivered one that was refurbished or taken from an OEM system and therefore out of warranty. I ended up buying one in-person in a computer store that was about 10% more expensive. For what its worth, Amazon had the easiest return process.

[subpixel]

At a macro level Amazon has usurped eBay's marketplace, but at a micro level FB marketplace has really hit its stride.

I will often wait until someone on FB is selling what I want within an hours drive, rather than buy the same thing to be shipped from afar. Skis, bikes, fermentation gear, Ring cameras, etc.

Mainly this is the result of being repeatedly burned on Amazon/eBay, but it's also related to the fact that I can often get the same thing cheaper when the competition is local.