[xvxvx]

Maybe the novelty of Amazon has worn off. I occasionally purchase from their UK site, and it’s filled with tricks to get me to sign up for Prime upon checkout. Really horrible workflow and design decisions, cheapening the experience. I now see similar changes to the US version: ‘you saved $15 in shipping by being a Prime member with this purchase’ and ‘last year you made 211 sustainable product purchases’.

Guys, quit being so desperate. Concentrate on quality items at competitive pricing and fast delivery. Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.

My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine and one bad day away from going in the trash. Next time you do a wave of layoffs, please include everyone involved in these horrible decisions.

[evmaki]

> My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine

I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures. It would need to be self-contained and local, so that the infrastructure burden (e.g., data and AI in the cloud) wouldn't create a need for subscription service or data collection revenue to cover the cost.

[vablings]

This is why devices that are basically loss leaders should always be illegal. The end value product is an update that will come later down the line that screws everything up.

For those considering smart home devices, please just buy a home assistant device. It is easy for the non-technical and also not that much more expensive

[init2null]

Matter/Thread is reasonably good with Apple Home. The more adventurous can also dual-join it to Home Assistant running on the same Thread network. It surprisingly just works, though the dual-controller setup still involves a little initial suffering.

[vablings]

I am using Matter/Thread with Home Assistant and the new ZBT-2. No Apple Home integration! Although I will say that homekit with the Home Assistant bridge is very good! Kudos to Apple

[nozzlegear]

> I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures.

Apple's HomePods have never had ads and don't require a subscription/data collection to control home devices.

[utdoctor]

But you have to interface with the software delight known as Siri

[nozzlegear]

True! I'm one of the lucky ones that Siri just understands every time, so I have no complaints. My wife's Siri usage is hit or miss though.

[never_inline]

Amazon has been quite useful for me as a single bachelor living in an Indian metropolitan city.

1. I get very useful items at very good prices, many of which I would have to wander the city for hours to find, or couldnt find at all: - Eg: I got a pair of adjustable dumbbells at <2K INR. Some of you would call it a cheap knock. But it has been super useful and I would have not bought it if it cost 8k INR. I brought a whole bosch repair toolkit at good price and it has been invaluable for fixing electric/plumbing etc.. issues. I got a high volume travel bag - I didn't even know 40L travel bags existed and wouldnt have brought one if not for amazon. I could go on.

2. Amazon Fresh is usually cheaper for groceries and maintain consistent quality compared to local supermarkets. I will also avoid the need to walk long with the grocery bag.

3. Electronics are significantly cheaper on amazon and again the need to search.

Maybe all of this can be even better as you said. But bottom line is that their operations look pretty efficient to me. Their catalogue is pretty much unmatched. (They may be losing money on retail business - but that's not my position to care as a customer. As other commenter pointed out, it may not even matter much for stock price.)

[iririririr]

amz is beholden to cheap products and labor. you have both in india.

elsewhere it's awful, for the exact same features you describe.

they even bought a premium supermarket chain so their produce stop being returned in the US.

[TitaRusell]

Yeah this is something really beautiful about India: life is cheap and there are tons of desperate people who will kill themselves for you.

In the Netherlands you'll be waiting an hour for your meal to be delivered by a bored teenager on an ebike. And you're going to be grateful.

[kombine]

> In the Netherlands you'll be waiting an hour for your meal to be delivered by a bored teenager on an ebike

It takes less than an hour to make a dinner oneself

[gzread]

Yeah, but then you have to make dinner. Delivery is asynchronous.

[kombine]

Yeah, making food is the most essential skill a human can have.

[HanClinto]

Home Assistant and other open-source projects seem like they may be the only way that we get consumer-friendly devices.

https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/the-local-first-...

[drstewart]

Amazon has become AliExpress at this point, so I just skip the middleman half the time

[bsder]

Amazon had better return policies. I suspect that is gone. I'll probably buy even less from Amazon, anymore.

I've gotten 2 different "You didn't return the right item" because I presume some underpaid, overworked contractor at the Amazon return site lost it or stole it.

Fortunately, the second one is very well documented, so Amazon is going to lose badly if they don't figure out what is going on.

[vablings]

It's a shame that all these stores have such a terrible UI/UX.

Amazon is pretty good at optimizing buying things but outside of that everything else sucks really bad especially on mobile

[amatecha]

That's what I call it, "American AliExpress" lol

[password54321]

Amazon has become a marketplace for cheap sometimes harmful chinese knockoffs. Amazon doesn't even check what is being sold. I only order directly from places I trust. http://nbcnews.com/business/recall/cheap-chinese-faucets-dan...

[dd8601fn]

I want to know how you can be a trillion dollar tech company with unlimited access to all the best minds and AI tools and whatever… and still have a busted-ass mobile app fronting their store. For YEARS.

[lysace]

I still like to buy my cheap and esoteric Chinese stuff from Amazon. It's a good balance of not-too-slow-delivery and not-too-expensive for very specific stuff. And it's easy to return if it doesn't work.

Example last purchase: An optical SPDIF/TOSLINK to 3.5 mm DAC box (5V/USB-powered) to put behind the TV with a broken/very low quality audio output. It was about $15 including 25% VAT. Probably like $5 on Aliexpress, but I didn't want to wait 6-8 weeks.

Never really buy anything for more than $50 from them though. And never anything containing Li-Ion batteries.

[homarp]

In Europe, most of Aliexpress delivery is 10 days (except during Chinese New Year).

[pyreko]

It's a bit longer in Canada (probably 3-4 weeks is what I usually see), but interestingly sometimes they're faster than Amazon-shipped stuff despite the former shipping from China.

[lysace]

I think that varies a lot by country/national post service?

[brunoarueira]

I guess so, in Brazil some deliveries arrives after 15 days, but it's that after the government increased taxes on products wanting any company which delivers to be legal compliant.

[nikcub]

My peak number of orders p.a was in 2023: 215 orders

In 2025 it was 27 orders

I expect it to be even lower this year. I didn't even buy my eero router upgrade from Amazon.

I largely attribute this to poor quality products, horrible search interface, trying to sort through the dropship spam, and prices no longer being as competitive.

Amazon used to have decent-quality "amazon native" brands like Anker, Eufy, Eero etc. but there are better alternatives to buying all of these products now

[dd8601fn]

I never thought I would say this, but Walmart is worlds better than Amazon for buying regular stuff. Their logistics are better, you have to wade through a lot less no-name trash to find the thing you wanted, and their Prime-like membership works across shopping and grocery. Also, it’s cheaper.

[Maro]

I'm a big fan of Amazon (UAE), in the sense that I buy stuff from Amazon almost every week. Having said that, in the last year or so, I found myself returning items more and more often. I get books damaged in shipping, wrong color items, wrong size shoes, empty boxes without the actual item, all sorts of weird failure modes. Marketplace sellers are definitely a big factor. As a response, lately I find myself thinking defensively when ordering from Amazon, like "what can go wrong", and pondering whether I should go out and find this in a store, buy from the brand's online store, get it off Ebay, etc.

[aetherson]

These just aren't the relevant concerns behind Amazon's stock performance in the last month. It's the capex.

[jacobjjacob]

Markets can’t see the product quality of a monopoly. It won’t be reflected in the metrics because there’s no competition to anchor the earnings to the real consumer value. But that doesn’t mean quality isn’t a factor- it makes them vulnerable to disruption.

Warren Buffett is known to trade on product quality (he buys what he uses). So his sale could be based on that.

[aetherson]

Amazon isn't a monopoly, it has 8% of retail in the US.

There's no real evidence that this trade was made by Buffet himself, and it's part of a general major sell-off of Amazon that transparently did not temporally align with the idea that Amazon's retail business has suffered a decline in quality.

This is the market making a (reasonable!) judgment that it lacks confidence that Amazon's capital expenditures will pay off.

[bespokedevelopr]

> Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.

They are the TJ Maxx of software development.

I personally haven’t expected anything more of them for years. Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made and all that.

[arisAlexis]

Amazon went all in robotics they have their ai training chips, they build their own satellite starlinks and run the one if the 3 clouds.

[wenc]

I have two Alexas but never get ads.

How is it that you’re getting ads?

[projektfu]

Are they the echo show? I don't get ads on my dots but the show shows ads most of the time, when I really want it to show the clock face instead.

Region might matter. I set it to Australia/New Zealand region and for about a year it didn't show ads. But it does, now, even though it talks with an Australian accent.

[genghisjahn]

The Alexa's with video screen will start to show ads no matter now many times you set it to no ads. There are settings for No Ads, and after a few days, that setting is reset to allow ads. I had one so I could quickly see my Blink camera, but I threw it away because it kept showing ads.

[fshr]

Did you actually throw it away or returned it?

[genghisjahn]

In the trash.

[guywithahat]

I mean if I want two day/fast shipping, it's still the only place that can do it without costing me $45, and even then a lot of places won't get it in the mail that fast. They also have a much more reliable and robust return policy, which is a headache for other sites. While I agree the experience has worsened it's still the best online store as far as I'm aware

[GorbachevyChase]

Amazon is Walmart for progressives.

[projektfu]

Everyone raced to the bottom so now Walmart almost feels better than the rest. I have somewhat more confidence in products I search there, or at least I can tell when the seller may be shady.

[nozzlegear]

Bizarre comparison

[zerotolerance]

They're an ads company now. Not a store. Not a device vendor.