To say Amazon is getting too much like eBay?

Sadly not.

Surely you can cancel if delivery date is so much later than it says on the listing.

I ordered a belt last week from Amazon, UK seller with a reasonably British sounding name, uk registered. Fuck me, it turns out that the delivery date is February 3rd. We all know what that means and where it's coming from. Too late to cancel.

Enshitification indeed.

Amazon is diabolical now. I've used it since the late 90s and the last few years it's gone downhill really badly.

Even buying from trusted sellers is no guarantee that you won't get some fake tat, as a PP said, it all gets mixed together in the warehouse.

It's a sea of cheap Chinese tat at now-inflated prices. Nothing of good quality or good value any more.

Prime Video has also taken a massive nosedive and has only a fraction of the content it had previously.

I no longer have Prime although DH still as he finds it handy for spares for his DIY and car tinkering.

I will only buy stuff that is for outside/garage use, and then only lower end. I don't trust anything to be the brand it claims, or safe. God knows what toxic materials some of the stuff is made of, it's a total backdoor to bypass safety regulations.
I buy most of my online shopping direct from the actual seller/manufacture websites now, yes it costs more potentially but at least I'm supporting them and keeping the brands I like going. I often buy bulk to get free delivery.

I do buy a lot of kindle books and I wish there were decent alternative sites for that.

I tried Prime but found that nothing was available for next day delivery any more.

To those people saying "just search for/but brands" I do where I can but when I want something like a zip or buttons, it's not that easy.

I really wish the search function was better and I wish they'd stop the hundreds of thousands of companies registering in the UK under names like NITTKSUX - we know what they are.

I have never had any of these problems, I use Prime, I pay annually and mainly buy brands so easy to check best price with other main retailers, things always arrive promptly and in good condition.

I've also noticed this. More and more crap and lots of dodgy sounding sellers. A lot of the stuff is shipped directly from China. You have to check very carefully to make sure it is fulfilled by amazon otherwise it ends up taking weeks to arrive. I was caught out by that once - never again.
I bought a couple of things recently that looked nice on the photos but were utter tat when they arrived so they went back.
The search function is much worse too. I used to use it a lot to find things such as hiking trousers and then usually worked out which ones I wanted to buy and order them from other websites which were usually cheaper! But now the search is no longer fit for purpose - you just get a load of shit coming up sort of related to hiking trousers (or whatever you have searched for).
I don't buy books on there any more either. I use the wishlist to keep a list of books I'm interested in buying and then buy them from second-hand independent sellers some of whom sell via Amazon but I prefer to go directly to their websites to buy so Amazon doesn't get the cut.

I had Prime and cancelled it because I was mainly interested in it for watching films and series but it was a load of crap really. Most of the good stuff you had to pay extra for so I started buying a couple of second hand DVDs a month which cost about the same as the prime membership and now I've got a nice collection of series and films.

I’ve just re fitted the kitchen.

AO : spoke to real person to ask questions, short delivery time, product fine.

Currys: picked it from the shelf ( very helpful chap carried to car and gave us free microwave steamer.)

Tap Warehouse: came late, filthy sink in open package, incorrect tap hole, couldn’t speak to a person, no response to emali

Ebay1: came quickly, one handle short of twenty. EBay 2 :pullout drawers : super fast, no problems.

East Coast kitchens : sent completely wrong item, still trying to get a refund (£195).

i didn’t buy any of it from Amazon because I hate what they did to bookshops. eBay usually has the same things but cheaper, and their complaints service is better.

Just eye-opening and conspicuous consumption taken to a whole new level.
Also the waste was so sad - all that food and all those clothes just ruined on purpose.

Quite a bit of the "Prime" stuff is more expensive so they can deliver it in 24h.

Amazon's been going downhill for ages.

Up until fairly recently it was full of fake reviews. Now it's full of crap products (and probably fake reviews).

That Netflix documentary is shocking on so many levels but the thing that got me were the 'hauls' - literally rooms, packed floor to ceiling with boxes and boxes of orders, just to be shown off on social media.

It is achievable. I deleted my Amazon account years ago (in disgust at their aggressive tax dodging and anti-union stance) and haven't missed it.

Was awful wasn't it. We just can't go on like this. Those beautiful beaches just covered in rubbish.

Just watched the "Buy Now" documentary on Netflix - it explains what's happening with Amazon.
Wall-E is really coming true 😞

We all just need to stop buying shit and companies need to stop making us want more.

It doesn’t make a difference.

Amazon does commingling, different sellers can send the “same” item to the Amazon warehouse and there are no checks to see if they are real. You can order from what you think is a good seller but the items are picked from the same bin.

I used to deal with Amazon fulfilment and sometimes we would ask for our stock back and it wasn’t the stock we sent in, it was stuff that other sellers had sent in but Amazon considered it the same because it had the same barcode on it (think kids Spider-Man costume, we sent an official one in and got fake ones back).

They probably do proper checks for their big clients like Apple but for everything else it’s Russian roulette.

Yes, I didn't know this until very recently when most things I'd ordered come in plain white box / air vacuumed clear packet and obviously wholesale tat from China rather than a decent quality item it looks like

I have a load of things that I buy from Amazon (yes, I know it's awful) - household supplies, business stationery, gardening things etc - and I also buy stuff for my mum who is allergic to doing her own internet shopping but also too crumbly to lurch round shops these days. This makes Prime worth it for me, even without the music or telly.

It could be. Maybe one day it will be. Outside of specialist applications, though, they train themselves on the internet - and they're undiscriminating (they don't 'know' anything), so they pretty much replicate the issues above.

The thing is to get better at filtering. A Google search for
"sequin top -Shein -Temu -Boohoo"
gets more of the results I'd like, and you can keep on filtering until it shows you ideas you're interested in following up. You can also try asking an AI for what you want, then keep chatting in hopes it will understand you, at least for that session.

An intelligent AI is a terrifying thought, but would make life easier ... in some ways!

Awful for toys. I've bought things from amazon before made by hot wheels or monster jam and they've sent me another version of a similar toy by the same brand. Also it's SO expensive. I've cancelled my subscription, runs out in Jan.

Hang on, isn't "AI" supposed to held us wade through this shit ?

I'm beginning to think it's not all it's cracked up to be.

Thank you SnoopysHoose, I got my oven from there and it hadn't occurred to me to see if they do smaller things. You are a star! ✨

Joking aside, the temptation to monetise a shopping website would be too great I think, given the time and investment.

I might use enshitification as my new user name though. It's brilliant!

I largely agree with @RedToothBrush. Especially since I live in Nowheresville, where even our B&Q has practically no physical stock and online orders are forwarded to third party sellers. It's annoying to sit on my sofa for an hour or so, navigating through a storm of crap in hopes of finding what I want. But compare that to:

An hour on the bus to my nearest city, or two trains to the nearest big city;
Walking from shop to shop, having to remember what I've seen and what it cost;
Needing to stop for coffee and something to eat;
More walking to buy the things I chose, if they're in stock;
Same journey back with bags & packages.

Takes a whole day, is at least as frustrating and much more knackering! And I still won't have seen everything I could have bought. It's less choice for more effort.

I miss living and working in London, where I sort of kept up to speed with things by osmosis and knew where to look for what I wanted. For the rest of us, though, the Web fills a lot of gaps. It could do better, mind you! Anybody fancy building a shopping search engine that actually works??

I don't think it's that hard to avoid dodgy stuff on Amazon unless you are largely buying tat.

Just check the seller.

Shop around for important stuff and trust brands for other things.