I no longer have the patience to navigate Amazon's terrible search results and have lost trust in the quality of their inventory.
Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount.
I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here.
I too have stopped buying on Amazon. I did so a while back after being concerned about counterfeits, safety issues, etc. I had this talk with my wife not too long ago about a mirror she ordered from Amazon, clearly made in China by a no-brand manufacturer. We discussed about how, yes, it looks nice, but we have no idea what quality of glass they used. So if it falls and shatters, it could be very dangerous. It also came with a bunch stuff on it that looked like pieces of fiber glass. I just don't trust anything on that platform anymore. I buy everything else from more legitimate sellers selling brand name stuff or directly from manufacturer's websites.
The example given of silicone spatulas could be particularly egregious - are they even RoHS or REACH compliant? They could be chock full of SVHCs that you serve to your family every supper.
I might send some of our Amazon stuff for testing for phthalates and find out.
I have definitely made it a rule that we don't purchase products that touch food from Amazon. I honestly have no idea how the products there are passing regulations. Are regulations even enforced anymore?
This doesn't sound like an Amazon issue though, but an issue with that specific product. You're the one who chose to purchase it. You would likely have the same experience with that product in other marketplaces like EBay, Walmart or Alibaba.
I don't buy this for a millisecond. Amazon ushered in this behavior and made it the "norm". It's throwaway, cheap, non-branded junk... and dangerous. There is value in discussion of the manipulation of the market and not just "Shop somewhere else". It's predatory.
If a marketplace lets itself get so dodgy that this kind of thing's normal, that's absolutely the marketplace's fault.
There's a big, shady flea market in a bad part of my city. Barbed-wire protecting the roof. Heavy bars on all the windows. Armed guards. Half or more of the vendors are plainly fences, or have a close relationship with one or more. Tons of stuff that "fell of the back of the truck". Entire booths carrying counterfeits of luxury goods, sold under the luxury brand name. It's kinda crazy it's allowed to exist.
You don't go there with the same expectations you do when you go to Wal-Mart or Costco.
Amazon tries to look like, and even started out as, a place like Wal-Mart or Costco. Now they're the "how have the cops not shut this place down?" shady flea market. It's 100% their fault that they're like that, and to the degree that they present themselves as anything else, that's deception.
Your comment implies we desire no product segregation from Amazon, nor any quality control from them, which is not something most people think of when they think of what Amazon ought to be. Most people think of Amazon like they think of a physical Walmart location; as a store that vouches every product it sells. You put Alibaba or Ebay in the same category as Walmart, but that's more akin to Walmart.com, the thing that will kill that brand. People go to Alibaba, eBay or Walmart.com for the dangerous Chinese knockoffs.
I want Amazon to be far more selective of the product it sells.
Walmart stores actually do very carful inventory control, and carefully manages the products it sells. The standard may be lower than you expect, but they are real.
Walmart marketplace is 3rd party sellers, but Walmart doesn’t commingle inventory so it doesn’t infect the rest of their products.
> I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here
Possibly there’s nothing to understand. It’s easily been long enough that it’s plausible that people are playing Chesterton’s Fence games, getting promoted for increasing revenue by .05% while making the experience 0.2% worse.
> Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount.
Funny that’s about 50% of my purchases because I’m terribly impatient and don’t (often) have a car so it’s way easier than going to the store and Canadas e-commerce options aren’t nearly as good as the US.
I wonder if Amazon has reached a point where they have eliminated all competition at least at a scale to no longer worry about this especially since their only competitor Walmart has similar cheap stuff that will require a drive to the store.
And targeting volume based sale where a lot of Americans especially in rural or suburban areas don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd.
Also targeting other countries like SE Asia, India, Brazil, Latin America, Africa where the volume of sales will be so high that again quality of inventory does not matter compared to ease of delivery.
> a lot of Americans especially in rural or suburban areas don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd
Please don't insinuate that rural or suburban Americans are somehow "less than" or don't care about quality. There are price-sensitive people everywhere.
> don't really care about the quality-read Walmart crowd.
I mean, in 2000, Walmart was where you got junk for cheap. In 2022, Walmart is where you know the supply chain is vetted. Everything on their shelves has been cost reduced to an inch of its life, but they also have a good handle on where it came from. It's a little bit easier to stay away from the marketplace garbage on walmart.com than on Amazon, IMHO, but I'd still rather shop somewhere without a marketplace. Unless I'm looking for stuff you can only find in a marketplace, and then you may as well go to ebay or aliexpress.
Nowadays I only order from Amazon if the order is a time critical item that only they can deliver on time for a reasonable price. That's less than 5% of my purchases in dollar amount.
I've been a customer since 1997. Amazon has impressed me with their ability to play the long game, and I don't understand the long term incentives favoring Amazon here.