To say Amazon is getting too much like eBay?

[JetskiSkyJumper]

It's hard to sort the genuine products from the dross.

You read reviews and they're clearly for a different item than what's now being advertised so can't be trusted

It's too hard to find what I need and I often end up just buying somewhere else

Agreed, it’s really annoying. I spend half my time checking who the sellers are.

Yep, it's so hard to sift through all the rubbish, and once you find what you need it's hard to know whether or not the seller is legitimate!

Yep, I was looking for a specific toy and the first load that came up were all nonbranded ones with random names. It's actually hard to find the thing you're looking for even when you're really specific in the search. Filters are shit too, they'll just show you anything.

I think we've all recognised clothes on amazon are stop gap clothes and rarely look like the pictures. As a taller person the trousers are always too short and sleeves on jumpers shrink. I've diverted baxk to more well-known brands from UK like M&S and Tu and it feels like a treat in comparison.

Yep it destroyed everything (book shops, individual shops) and now is serving us up cheap rubbish. Depressing!

Yes, now it's starting to compete with the likes of Temu and similar sites. They even have their own Budget app thing called Haul. It's just full of junk.

maybe it depends what your looking for, i find many legit sites sell their product lines on amazon. clarks shoes, samsonite, briggs and riley just to name a few.
it may be last years model or not. i can't fault them for delivery and i really like their wrap option.
for now i'm still a fan.

Yep, knocked everyone else out of business and now Amazon prices have gone up and the usability of the app has gone down.

Have you got Prime? Of you select Prime only or All Prime it filters out some of the dross.

There are sellers that don’t always seem reputable and the products from there are often flimsy and poor quality or ‘fake’. Some of the products I have bought and had to return recently had lots of 5 star reviews that didn’t match the actual product at all. It’s definitely not as reliable as it was.

Loads of established sites have absolutely gone down the plughole quality wise.

Amazon, full of knock offs, 15 versions of the same product (all about 15 p difference in price)
Facebook, chock full of shite ads and bot posting AI crap.
Twitter, absolute cesspool of shite and spam.

The curation of these sites has gone to the dogs. Quantity over quality. Never go to them now really.

This is a great essay on exactly this process, which the author calls "enshittification": https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

The reviews are really useful. I always filter for critical reviews, it saves paging through dozens of suspiciously similar accolades. It is annoying when not all the reviews are for the same product, and I tend to avoid those as I assume the sellers are drop-shippers.

Cheap stuff from IXYBLIZK or whatever made-up name, I go and find it on Temu or Ali Express. If the exact same photos are there with a lower price and decent feedback, I buy it from the same place the Amazon seller got it!

I do spend a lot on there, though, as I'm paying for Prime at the moment. It's just so bloody easy, the returns process is great, and there are hardly any real shops where I live these days. Agree with the PP that you can sometimes find known brands that have sold out elsewhere, and often for a good price.

15 versions of the same product (all about 15 p difference in price)

Very true, and very annoying. But, yesterday, I ordered some chewing gum. I was getting really pissed off with all the different multi-packs working out at 1p or 2p less or more per pack - and having to do the maths, because Amazon calculates them slightly differently each time. Then I realised that if I was standing at a supermarket checkout, I'd just put the damn things in my basket without fretting over a penny a pack here and there!

"Spoilt for choice" actually meant something then 😂

I agree. I've tried to order DVDs a few times recently and when they arrived they were clearly bootlegged, and in one case wouldn't play in my region even though it said it would in the listing.

I've stopped other than sometimes for books. But even there you need to be careful.

I agree. I'm needing to replace a number of small kitchen appliances and the search results are full of peculiar brand names I've never seen before, with low average ratings.

Yes, I agree. I looked up a specific dog collar recently to see if it was cheaper on there (brand and collar name) and had to scroll through lots of other brands first. I gave up. The only things I regularly buy now on Amazon is books for my kindle.

Pages of the same product, same image, wildly different prices are more my experience. Is it sellers taking the piss. Are they getting your order, buying it off a cheaper competitor and gift shipping it from their Prime account. eBayers have done that, although they get banned from Amazon quite quickly when caught. Also, what the fuck is going on where, if you accidentally click too many pages in, you get a £40 radiator cover for something like £1,650.00.
Are they out of stock so putting a massive ridiculous price on it to protect their listing or are they actually scammers hoping you won't twig before clicking "Buy".

Amazon, by their own admission, has absolutely no quality control. Zero. The ONLY reason to order for them is that you spot an item which you would otherwise order directly from the (trusted by you) source, and you are absolutely sure it is the SAME item, but you get a discount or free shipping if you order it directly from Amazon. That's it; that's all.

I agree! We cancelled our Prime and actually enjoyed going into town to “choose.

but now it’s Christmas & I’ve been made redundant so there are a few things we need so we reinstated Prime. Everything so far has arrived with huge Chinese labels printed all over it, bashed up packaging, covered in dust from a warehouse.

UGH!! It’s all so manky.

I read an article recently saying many or most of the electronics on there are actually unsafe. I think it was in the BBC or Which!

I actually think we are deAmazon-ing slowly. Once Christmas is done we’ll cancel Prime again. And our Alexa broke and we got a Google Home instead.

Amazon Prime TV is just full of stuff you have to pay for? So I uninstalled it from my TV which is Alexa enabled. And disabled all the “voice” features and my TV is so much quicker.

I do have a Kindle though!

Amazon is now just a shopping mall, with different businesses selling under their roof.

It used to be that you could trust something bought via Amazon, but now you just don't know who you're buying from.

When you click on the seller, 99 times out of 100 it's coming from China.

Debenhams is the same, I ordered some fittings for my bathroom and they came from 3 different sellers, took nearly 2 weeks for them all to arrive.

@Zinglenibber
Try Ao.com, very good and you can choose delivery date, which is a great idea rather than hope it turns up

Temu stuff with a heavy mark up is disappointing to find.