Shopping on Amazon Has Gone to Absolute Shit

[Pim Fortuyn]

I pretty much only use it to buy physical books these days, you can still get some pretty good deals on second hand ones and the most egregious problem you're likely to run into is the cover being different to what was in the picture.

I used to get books second hand, but for over a year now this has been impossible. The sellers will "send" you the package with insane delivery times (30-60 days) and it will never arrive. And you can only dispute after a couple of days after the supposed delivery date. If you do, the seller might try to send it after all, one time it showed up 3 months after I ordered it, but they sent it from outside the EU and didn't clear it with customs, so I would have had to pay import fees, totally nonsensical, when I can order the book new from inside the EU and the second hand seller never noted anywhere it would be subject to customs.
This happens with sellers with good reviews, probably all fake. Probably bet on people forgetting having ordered it in the first place.

 

[Mnutu]

I’ve actually had luck with some of the Amazon Basics stuff. I don’t know which company they’re partnered with but the guitar stand I got works as intended and appears sturdy. Was about the same price as all the others too.

Seconding Amazon Essentials. At least for clothes. Never bad, pretty cheap, but they’ll last a good while if you care for them.

 

[Safir]

Their suggestions are also hilarious, why do you keep suggesting me something that I already own you fucking retards?

They still haven't fixed that? They have AI that can write better than most humans and they still haven't made a working recommender? Jesus fuck.

people who think writing to politicians and the Better Business Bureau actually does anything.

I don't know about America, here in Russia telling the Federal Anti-monopoly Service on a company or the Central Bank on a bank is a good way to sting them. They won't give back my money or anything but it's sort of satisfying to know I cost them way more than they cost me. The Central Bank can issue a binding rule for all the banks going forward, based on a consumer complaint. To issue binding rules for other businesses going forward (and to get money back), the Supreme Court is very consumer-friendly but I'd have to actually sue.

 

[Tiggletown]

I'm not a retard who buys things from private chink sellers on Amazon to save a buck and ends up getting scammed like half of the geriatrics posting in this thread.

Selecting shipped from Amazon will filter 90% of that out anyways.

But! There is a big wave of fraud in the Card Game community where a seller will open boxes of product take out all the money cards then shrink wrap them and send them to Amazon to be fulfilled. Amazon takes all the product and puts in in a singular bin and it's impossible to know who is scamming Amazon and the buyer when they receive a box of resealed commons.

Anything like that id never buy on Amazon even though it's an easy exchange if it does happen.

 

[ZMOT]

How many copies of the same book could I possibly need?

it's not how many you can read, but how many you can buy

It used to be that there would be a single listing I could click, the one sold by Amazon. There would be an option on the product page to look for new or used copies from other people. Simple, streamlined, and convenient. You could see how they became so dominant. Now I'm lucky if I can find the one sold by Amazon among the listings by ChingChongUsedDVDSale and Chink_Chink_Sales_DVD_Market, and I'm lucky if Amazon has any in stock.

yeah, it feels at some point amazon said "fuck oversight, fuck paying for people to categorize stuff", now everybody can list everything however they want where they want, which is part of the issue.

 

[Morning Alarm]

I hadn't ordered a thing from Jewizon in a few years, and I decided to go check out how fucked up their algorithm is a few months ago.

It's basically Chinese shit for 5x markup. That's it. Full stop.

 

[Sandy Sun Dunes]

Haven't ordered from Amazon personally in years because of their jewish shipping policies. Years ago they put my town on their Remote Areas list even though we weren't anywhere close to qualifying under their own criteria at the time (they've obviously since added a clause of "fuck you, because we said so"). Fucking added like $40 shipping per item no mater the size or price. The last time I did one of my own orders from them was 2020 when I was building my computer. Fuckers charged me $400 shipping for delivery taking 4+ weeks. On a logistics route I know the cost of using, and it would be $60 dollars at absolute maximum for what I received. That's when I decided to do all future electronics purchases through Best Buy.

Since then I've had to help few friends and family members with Amazon purchases as well as doing a few for work. Every time I open the site it gets worse. Sure AWS is their real cash cow, but how the fuck could they let the core product of their brand, the marketplace, deteriorate like this?

 

[Bring Back 2012]

Here's my advice, if you're buying a big flash drive from amazon, and it's not manufactured by SanDisk, there's a high chance that it's fake.

 

[DavidS877]

Here's my advice, if you're buying a big flash drive from amazon, and it's not manufactured by SanDisk, there's a high chance that it's fake.

If it has a SanDisk logo, there's a high chance it's fake too.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

If it has a SanDisk logo, there's a high chance it's fake too.

I believe it was SanDisk who, after being alerted by a third party, discovered that there were counterfeit MicroSD or SD cards on the shipping dock of their own factory. (Might have been someone else, it's been a few years.)

 

[anustart76]

It's as if the Chinese vendors run a string of a certain length through a random generator.

They do. Amazon has been courting the CCP and Chinese sellers to flood their site with cheap chink shit over the last few years because it means lower prices for various item categories, which keeps people shopping on Amazon. The CCP and Chinese sellers obviously benefit from all the sales. As a result, these Chinese companies, who aren't native English speakers, have to have their own names for trademark reasons. Because it's so hard to come up with names, they've resorted to just using random strings of characters that they can then trademark.

 

[Drael]

Amazon has generally been pretty good for buying computer hardware for me at least. Pre-2015 I used Newegg but the quality of that place took a dive so I really only use them to browse hardware since their filters are better.

The only oddity I've encountered with Amazon in the last couple years was buying a used motherboard from their warehouse at a decent discount. The board arrived fine and was perfectly functional as far as I could tell, but while it was the right box, it wasn't the correct motherboard. I had bought an "Asus x570 dark hero" but what was inside the box was an "Asus x570 hero". There's very little practical difference between those two boards but I'm 99% sure someone had the board I received, wanted to upgrade, and performed a switch on Amazon. Effectively leaving me stuck holding it.

I returned it the following day and bought a similarly priced used board of the same model without issue. I opted not to bring this problem to the attention of Amazon's chat support since I didn't trust the broken English pajeets on there to not somehow make this my problem.

To be fair to whoever may have been working Amazon's returns department, the two boards are very similar looking, especially with the RGB gaymer lights off:

 

[DavidS877]

My car needs "special" oil, as small Diesel engines are common in Europe, but not the US. So I ordered the exact same item I got as the last oil change, from the exact same 3rd party shipped by Amazon.

And it's the wrong fucking oil. Had the vendor sticker saying the right thing, but the wrong UPC and the wrong letters after the "5W-30" part.

Now it's at least sort of available in auto parts stores so I can pick it up next time I go out and make sure I get the right thing.

 

[Spud]

I've been seething about this for the last 36 hours. I ordered the Logitech steering wheel, it was supposed to be here on Monday, even got notifications from Amazon telling me it was 8 stops away. It's then updated to say that it'll be here between 1:45 and 2:45pm to which I waited and went back to work, I check the time and see 3pm and think to myself that Amazon should have been here. It's been an issue as well with drivers just leaving shit at the door and not even bothering to knock so I go check. Nothing and I check my order and apparently it's been delivered when it clearly fucking hasn't, get the customer support bot and it tells me it's suppose to be here on Wednesday, I get a human one to confirm as well and they say the same thing.

 

[Space Pope]

I made the mistake of buying $10 case of canned tomatoes from a 3rd party seller. I thought I was buying from Amazon. The next day I got a FedEx tracking number and it was to my city but it didn't show up in my FedEx account. I took a closer look and it was an overnight envelope weighing like 8 ounces. The next day the package got marked as delivered to me in Amazon. It took over a week and multiple phone calls to get my $10 back. Way too much effort trying to explain to pajeets that a case of tomatoes didn't fit in a 8 ounce FedEx envelope. When I finally got them to transfer me to the US, it was some southern black woman who was dumber than the Indians.

I don't even know what the scam the 3rd party seller was running. Harvesting my name and address? If so, for what purpose?

 

[Car Won't Crank]

My car needs "special" oil, as small Diesel engines are common in Europe, but not the US. So I ordered the exact same item I got as the last oil change, from the exact same 3rd party shipped by Amazon.

And it's the wrong fucking oil. Had the vendor sticker saying the right thing, but the wrong UPC and the wrong letters after the "5W-30" part.

Now it's at least sort of available in auto parts stores so I can pick it up next time I go out and make sure I get the right thing.

Never buy oil on Amazon unless you really absolutely need to. I've found that Euro oil is readily available at Walmart for the lowest price and your chain auto stores for a bit higher. Shell Rotella T6 is accessible everywhere and Valvoline makes oil for both diesel and gas engine with euro certs.

 

[DavidS877]

Never buy oil on Amazon unless you really absolutely need to. I've found that Euro oil is readily available at Walmart for the lowest price and your chain auto stores for a bit higher. Shell Rotella T6 is accessible everywhere and Valvoline makes oil for both diesel and gas engine with euro certs.

Sadly, the available Dexos2 certified oil list is very short. Rumor is Valvoline and Castrol both dropped the cert. And the 1qt prices are ridiculous at the parts stores. Looks like Mobil 1 ESP is available in 5Qt at one place near me and below $10/Qt, which requires leaving the house.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

I remember ordering some ground garden lights from Amazon to light up my pathway. When it arrived, The glass from 2 of these lights have already been broken. I wonder if people from Amazon have been mishandling these items.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

Way too much effort trying to explain to pajeets that a case of tomatoes didn't fit in a 8 ounce FedEx envelope.

Here's an idea: Shouldn't it be possible for the machine to know that? Cyc of Douglas Lenat (RiP) is an artificial intelligence program for just that, giving a machine common sense. Why doesn't Amazon use Cyc to check things, since everything's already organized into neat categories? Well, it's easier to throw a bunch of shit they don't own into neural network nonsense that doesn't work anyway, and besides, they clearly don't care regardless.

 

[thejackal2]

I've been seething about this for the last 36 hours. I ordered the Logitech steering wheel, it was supposed to be here on Monday, even got notifications from Amazon telling me it was 8 stops away. It's then updated to say that it'll be here between 1:45 and 2:45pm to which I waited and went back to work, I check the time and see 3pm and think to myself that Amazon should have been here. It's been an issue as well with drivers just leaving shit at the door and not even bothering to knock so I go check. Nothing and I check my order and apparently it's been delivered when it clearly fucking hasn't, get the customer support bot and it tells me it's suppose to be here on Wednesday, I get a human one to confirm as well and they say the same thing.

Usually what it means is the driver has made a mistake and left it at the wrong door, or they wanted to mark it delivered and left it outside where it is easily stolen even tho the instructions might say leave with owner or leave inside.

It sucks to have to wait until Amazon clears their own protocol but Amazon has an amazing hassle free replacement policy. Open the chat bot in a day or two and you'll have the option to just request a cancel or replacement.

In general I'm not really sure what the bitching in this thread is about. It's fairly easy to see where the item is being sourced from and the seller ratings are fairly accurate. Product ratings are almost all spam and "I received this item free in exchange for a review" so that's why you do your own research before buying whatever.

If there is a legit beef with Amazon that isn't user error I'd say it's adding commercials to Prime video. Prime has like tripled in price over the last decade, having the video library ad free was part of what made it still worth it. I'll keep prime as I use it constantly to avoid local retail prices and it pays for itself, but it's a "shrinkflation" tactic that sucks for consumers.