Ironically enough Ebay is probably the most trustworthy platform atm. It might sound insane but eBay listings are usually pretty clear on the origin and condition of the items. You know when the seller is from China, or if the item is used, and while there are tons of scams and misleading descriptions... for the most part sellers are usually pretty honest in the item descriptions. I don't mind buying knock offs as long as I know that they aren't the real deal, and cheap items are at least priced accordingly. Which is not the case on Amazon.
The differences between shopping at Ebay and Amazon are that on Ebay you're 1) buying from a particular seller with feedback that actually refers to their own performance and products, rather than "reviews" that refer to a semi-random selection of different products purchased from a completely unrelated range of sellers, and 2) on Ebay those products are half the price of Amazon.
Somebody sent me an Amazon gift card a while back, and I still haven't found reason to use it. The only thing I still find Amazon useful for is to buy small amounts of industrial supplies and parts that are usually sold directly from suppliers to businesses in large amounts, who often have terrible web storefronts (or only use Amazon for ecommerce) because they usually deal with their (buy-by-the-case, repeat) customers by phone or in person. If I only need two specialized bolts or two feet of tubing, I'll go to Amazon.
Whoever championed (CIO?) and executed that e-commerce deserves an award. Serious. I work with a bunch of middle market manufacturers and distributors and doing e-commerce is HARD for them. I use that site as a reference on "how to do it right", every. single. time.
In the US, if you buy specialty hardware from Amazon you probably are going to pay a markup on the markup because McMaster Carr is probably the previous source.
Fastenal is another good option as well. Grainger can be good for other random industrial things (tho pricey). I've found that fastenal's shipping is INSANELY fast. Like get it delivered the next day fast. Though that could be my location.
Not sure if eBay still does it, but they also let sellers recycle old listings' reviews for different products on new listings. I experienced that at least once with a return.
You've convinced me to try ebay again. It's gotten so tiresome trying to identify whether or not you're buying garbage on Amazon. I put plenty of time into it and I still get burned occasionally.
I dropped my Prime membership over a year ago and have no regrets. eBay has made that possible. I’ve gotten consistently fair prices and quick shipping, and ironically fewer quality issues. Target and Costco have also become a bigger factor as well with free shipping and in store returns.
My cloud computing has moved to GCP, DO, and my homelab (built from eBay stuff!).
I still use Amazon if I have no other option. I just pay for shipping, but surprise… it’s usually still free over $25.
It's crazy how these 2 platforms seemed to have switched places. Several years ago, Amazon would have been the place to do for scam-free purchasing, and eBay was the shady site that you had to do your due diligence on before buying.
More and more it's the opposite. I have to wrangle with searches and filters on Amazon to try and avoid the "fake" brands and knockoff goods. eBay is easier and often cheaper to boot.
I think it's because eBay, since it's founding, has had a scam problem that it's been actively trying to address. They aren't perfect, but they have certainly been putting in multiple measures to increase trust.
Amazon, on the other hand, has nearly done the opposite. They don't do anything about scammers and have created an environment where even when you buy something directly from amazon you might get a knock off. You can't trust anything there.
Everyone knows the amazon reviews are garbage, even amazon. Yet they keep them because having 1000 garbage reviews looks better than having 10 legitimate reviews (and many of them negative).
Amazon has optimized for moving any and everything.
There is an understanding between shopper and shop owner about what is happening on said property. The shopper normally does not expect that the shop owner would instantly know your entire biography + family lineage just by stepping onto the property.
You collect cell phone IMEIs and sell it to a data broker that aggregates multiple sources to pinpoint strong associations that lead back to a shopper's home. In return you get demographic data on your customers.
sure - posted plainly to the public. "caveat emptor" While we are at it, where are those records kept? Who sells them, to whom? What happens when there are factual errors in a private profile on members of the public? What other restrictions are placed on members of the public due to undisclosed records? What political affiliations do the owners of TARGET have, and do they use their company assets for political purposes, or private law-enforcement activities? Politics and law-enforcement are regulated acitivities, for historically important reasons, right?
I also don't have Prime, and buy from eBay where possible, but a substantial fraction of the time, the things I buy turn up in Amazon boxes. I think there are eBay sellers who have Prime, list items at slightly less than Amazon's price including shipping, then use their free shipping to drop-ship items to customers. They collect slightly less than Amazon's shipping fee in gross margin, and only have the Prime free as overhead.
(Prime video, but in Germany I feel there is only uninteressing films there)
It's interesting how without prime they tell me it takes one week to be sent (or some days), but then always after ordering correcting shipping date down, most often to the same as prime (which makes sense, holding back my order would only create costs to them).
Prime Video is worth the cost alone. Cheaper than Netflix.
Why'd you say free and 2-day shipping is a thing of the past? All my shipping from Amazon is free, and 2 day is the slowest it arrives usually. Mostly I get things next day, sometimes within 12 hours
I wanted to do that. But EBay has decided my account was hacked (I haven't done anything in 5 years and suddenly want to sell something - I understand the red flag). This can only be resolved by calling them at a phone number they will not give me.
Oh that's a very good point though. Ebay support is great for refunds but absolutely useless w.r.t any account specific problem. I couldn't buy anything for 2 years a while ago and they would never explain why.
Turns out my old PayPal account had a minor issue, and that meant I couldn't use ebay even if I didn't even have my PayPal account linked to ebay anymore and I was using a new credit card. I had to figure that out by myself, ebay was completely useless and unhelpful.
Honestly I can’t say that one’s corporate ethics and practices are superior to the other. It was just a matter of trying to limit my footprint. Google’s got me locked into gSuite for now because I’m haven’t been up to the level of effort to move my domains, docs, etc. I’m on a journey towards free software and devices, but Apple and Google still have broad access to me, my wallet, and my behaviors. I’m fully divested from Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft (except for a mostly idle Xbox). I use almost entirely free software on my desktop. My ISP and cell provider are mega corps. Libre Office, NextCloud, and other tools have come a long way. I had an adventure with a Pinephone, but it didn’t meet my needs at the time. Email hosting has remained an elusive issue for finding an alternative to gsuite. I’ve paid them for years and not had issues.
All of this is to say I’m trying various ways to limit my participation with dubious companies but I’ve had to pick my battles for myself and my family as we all do. Not using Prime has been a relatively convenient and painless change that I was able to do.
I invested heavily for years in getting various AWS certs. Leaving it behind for my personal cloud computing wasn’t easy to do, but my side projects and day job have recently lined up around GCP so I’ve been putting energy there.
I’m not convinced my choices are going to make much of a difference, but I would make them again at this point.
Thanks for the explanation. While it may not make much difference I think there are other personal benefits to your approach. Big company stuff is less personal, harder to get support for etc. (Apple excepted). Open source of course has the advantage of not changing (Looking at... JIRA!) on your or cancelling (be it a famed Google shutdown, or a startup not getting their next round). If the OSS software does change just keep to the old version or fork.
The greatest part about eBay for me, is that it actively encourages you to network with a set of vendors, and develop a level of trust. That's just something I've never got from Amazon.
I have repeat purchased from vendors on eBay for different items based on previous experiences. eBay makes that easy - Amazon is the complete opposite. They hide the vendor as much as possible.
I agree that eBay has quietly become more trustworthy than most others, and they have more experience with user review and trust management systems that just about anyone.
I am not even sure that eBay has become more trustworthy - they just kept doing what they were always doing. The others have just become significantly more shady.
Unless Ebay has overhauled their reputation system recently, you will buy counterfeit/mislabeled goods from a merchant, and then either receive a bribe (as a partial return) to keep a five star rating or you have to open an incident to get a full refund, in which you can't leave a rating and tell other people to beware.
This allows terrible merchants from all parts of the world to push crap on unsuspecting customers.
I also buy (after 10+ years) much more from eBay than Amazon. First for trust, second they often have more specialized filters than amazon (E.g. cardboard box sizes).
eBay's search gets worse every year, but Amazon's sucks way harder. As you say, at least you can filter better on eBay (although their price filters are getting vague like Amazon).
This doesn’t detract from your point, but I find a lot of shipping from China sellers listing themselves as from/shipping from Australia when it’s just not true. Maybe it’s just Australia with this issue?
The way to differentiate in my experience is the Chinese sellers often won’t have a city or post code in their ships from address shown on the listing, and more obviously the postage times are twice as long (or more) than an actually local seller.
