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

It’s utterly awful.

What a surprise. Not.

I used to buy loads of stuff on Amazon but now the only thing on my subscribe and save is dog poop bags: says a lot doesn’t it!!!

Totally agree with you OP, really noticed it more and more over the last couple of years.

I've just bought an Amazon basics hoodie that looks identical to ones on Weird Fish and Fat face for half the price.

I'm not wearing it anywhere public so 🤷‍♀️

Generally use it for books - can’t face wading through all the crap to buy anything else. The experience there has got a lot worse too. Self-published or obscure stuff coming out at the top of a search, not making clear what edition, language or translation you’re getting (this is a massive issue with classics that are out of copyright), kindle books being a completely different version of the hardback or paperback and so on. Downloaded a kindle book of something once to find it wasn’t the novel at all but some sort of essay on staging the novel - that showed as the kindle version of a regular penguin novel.

It’s absolute shit.

There’s a lot of tat on Amazon nowadays. Best avoided.

I am disorganised, so Prime is good, for me. I tend to buy the same things, from the retailers own stores, and I can get delivered the next day through prime. When I’d otherwise have to wait 2-3 days for other sites. Also last minute stuff.

There is so much rubbish on Amazon. I only get things via prime so at least it can be returned without hassle.
I also generally only buy name brand things on Amazon. For example, I like Yorkshire Tea Biscuit Brew. It's not sold anywhere in my small town. I have boxes of 4 on my subscribe and save and it works out much cheaper and saves me going into a larger supermarket. I buy a lot of branded dry goods like that.

I buy Geox school shoes for dd because her feet have stopped growing so I know exactly what size she'll be and style she likes.

Books, obviously.

Ds likes branded joggers but needs men's large and tall. They are sold on Adidas's website but are always out of stock. I can usually find them on Amazon and at a discount.

You just have to filter heavily to get rid of the no brand junk.

Must say I havn't really noticed it but I suppose it depends on what you are buying. I don't buy clothes on Amazon at all. I do buy stationery, books, electronics etc., and seldom have a problem. I do, though, always filter by "Prime" so that I presume gets rid of a lot of amateur/dodgy sellers who won't use the "fulfilled by Amazon" system, and of course gives quick and free delivery.

The few times I've bought something that didn't work, damaged or poor quality, I've just sent back for a refund, no drama, money back in bank account within a few days, or even same day, depending on method of return.

My last few purchases are a reconditioned laptop, cheap inkjet cartridges, rexel staples, a fax roll (!), bluetooth dongle, 6 way switched extension lead, landline telephone with earphone jack, and a reconditioned iphone 12. Happy with all of them. All via Prime. Well, tell a lie, there was a very slight problem with the laptop in that one of the keys was sticky, but seller promptly posted me a new keyboard and emailed a link to a video showing how to swap it. Happy days. I'd have struggled to find any of that in our depressing High Street (laughably called as it's nothing but money laundering shops) nor the out of town supermarkets.

I just select Prime and only buy branded for most things. For electronic accessories I only buy Belkin or Anker if I don't want to pay Apple prices

It's useful to buy from official stores if you have prime, I won't buy branded unless it's from an official store.

I find the same with the internet in general. It’s just the same few websites that are pushed the whole time. All of which are shit. It’s just shopping, AI answers, Reddit and the that’s it.

For people in towns with crap shop choice, the internet is brilliant. Our town was going downhill for decades. We lost our M&S in the 90s and that started the rot along with out of town supermarkets and warehouse retailers like B&Q, Argos, Dunelm, Pets at Home, etc. We really struggled back in the noughties to renovate and kit out our new house as all the smaller/independent shops had gone. Now we've the internet, we've got a lot more options and choice.

I can see why some people who've enjoyed vibrant town centres until more recently blame the internet - they were lucky to have kept smaller/independents for longer. But out in the regions it was out of town retail parks, and huge supermarkets/chain stores that killed the local shopping experience a couple of decades ago. Now, ironically, they're in turn being killed by the internet.

Yes, our town centre is so bad now. It was in decline and now in the last few years it’s awful. So grotty. So I still mainly shop online. I try going into town but there’s no good shops

This is true and actually made me appreciate the labour intensive 'curation' of mumsnet!

I've stopped using Amazon as much, I must have had at least 6 items not delivered this year and getting a refund isn't simple.

YABU, eBay is much better, easier to search, pricing is better, there are more products that are actually from real UK sellers, and you can filter new or secondhand (generally) by using "buy it now" or "auction" at the top of the page. Amazon is appalling and has been since around 2012, and is getting worse each year, but I think you've perhaps got little recent experience with eBay and I would encourage you to try it again.

It's black Friday today and I had a load of stuff in my basket for Christmas - almost all of it has gone UP in price! So much for Black Friday.

The customer service is shit now as well, it used to be good. I have been going round in circles with them and no one can resolve my issue, it's not possible to escalate and I have to start again every time.

I thought it was just me so I'm glad to hear its not but shopping is a depressing activity now whichever way you do it.

I live in the Midlands and it's a wasteland for retail. There's literally nothing anymore, not that it was ever great but you used to be able to go into the smarter towns and find independent, quality shops. That went in about 2020 due to the pandemic.

Ive avoided Ebay for the last six or seven years due to the tat on offer and I'm disappointed that Amazon is going the same way but Ive also noticed it on Etsy too. I dont know what the answer is. We seem to be drowning under a deluge of imported rubbish.

Ive been online clothes shopping recently and when I type in say, women's wool straight leg trousers, all the results are for Temu, Shein, Boohoo and Primark, despite the fact that Ive never shopped there AND I'm in my fifties, so not their demographic.

Why, in the age of cookies and user profiling, am I not getting results from Reiss, Jigsaw, Whistles and Joseph, who I DO shop with?

It's so frustrating.

Agree @Game0fCrones , the algorithms are constantly getting what I want to see wrong, pushing me to Temu/Shein/international companies, instead of local ones which I prefer. I've started to hate going online to look at things, because the search results are so wank. It feels like the Internet is a giant jumble sale of shite.

Etsy has been destroyed by the cheap tat masquerading as proper maker stuff, and I don't even go there because I assume that whatever I see there is on sale at 1/10 the price on Temu etc. which I didn't want to shop from in the first place.
And to know that the these vast data centers are being set up, draining the national grid, to essentially keep the lights on in the Internet dustbin going....

Can you just buy stuff that's sold by and dispatched by Amazon?

I got scammed on there recently from a site that seemed genuine (and not a product that you'd expect would interest con merchants). Luckily my credit card company was onto it straight away and blocked it.

I use filters absolutely all the time on eBay, and I wish there was a way to set a permanent default filter that wasn't "everywhere".

So as well as size, I filter on location (UK only), brands (where I know what I'm looking for), material (because even if you search for, say, "merino sweater", half the results won't have been anywhere near a sheep) as standard. That does tend to knock out most of the stuff I'm not interested in.