eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.
I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.
Haha, I ordered my car wing mirror cowl and it arrived in a box with an Amazon gift receipt. I suppose the eBay fellow was solving a discovery problem for me for a cut. Good for him.
If only they would sort out their language / shipping country / currency model and make it so I can actually select what I want rather than their wrong assumption.
(And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)
I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep.
Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice things.
i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”
how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?
oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.
Recently I attempted to return an item to AliExpress. They gave me a USPS return label with a domestic address that Google Maps showed as some generic office building. This address turned out to be an undeliverable and the package bounced back to me.
Support couldn't explain it and said I'd have to pay for a replacement label since I guess they only pay for one return per order.
I filed a chargeback instead. It was approved immediately. Surprisingly, AliExpress didn't ban my account or card, and I still shop there instead of equally terrible Amazon or eBay.
YMMV a lot with Aliexpress. I bought a $700 chiller that arrived without a small attachment fitting for the return inlet line. I complained, received another chiller (with the fitting) free. Go figure.
This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)
I think that is key. I used to browse Best Buy's website for various electronics and it was typically pretty good. I knew that somewhere, a Best Buy product buyer was evaluating the products with at least a minimum set of expectations. Then they opened their marketplace to 3rd party sellers and it's the same low cost, low quality crap on every other site.
> leave a product review in exchange for a free bed scrunchie accessory
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation).
If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon:
* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.
* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.
* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.
So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).
Yep -- I've gotten multiple postcards in the mail and/or product box after ordering something telling me I'd get ~$5-$10 if I left a 5 star review. They thoughtfully included exact screenshots of how to submit the review.
I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere.
(I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).
Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.”
If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal.
I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.
I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!
google.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.
I do my best to find a local or online shop that actually knows & understands what they sell. Getting harder, but for more expensive items definitely achievable.
I have yet to find something on Amazon that I couldn't find at a local shop for within 5% of the Amazon price. I live in a very rural area, so I have to imagine that it's easier if you live near a city. Or maybe my sample size of 1 person isn't enough.
A lot of things are actually LESS expensive in stores. All that speedy delivery adds a lot to costs that are baked in. Sometimes things on Amazon are 50+% more. You have to know your prices to know what’s a good deal vs what’s a total ripoff.
IE folks will take a 4 pack of something that sells for $20 and sell each bottle individually for $10 each.
My rule of thumb is that every not-heavy product has about $7 of shipping costs baked in somewhere. For cheap items, there isn't enough markup to cover those costs, so they are usually higher priced than at retail. If it's $50 or more, there usually is, and the amazon price will be competitive or better than retail.
For heavy things the shipping ding is bigger, but they also usually cost at least $30. No one bothers to sell $5 items like 50lb bags of basic sand on amazon.
"This item will arrive tomorrow at 9 AM" -> Pay -> "Sorry this item can't be delivered by tomorrow will be delivered 2 days later" -> Next day -> "This item will be delivered 3 weeks from now"
It's not common that they miss those timed delivery windows, in my experience... but when they do their systems don't seem to be able to handle it well and the delay is far worse than it would have been if it _weren't_ a timed window. I suspect it's related to the timed deliveries mostly being farmed out to gig drivers.
I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing.
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
> The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.
But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.
There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.
I tend to find ebay less shady than Amazon these days, which is a bit disapointing really.
eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.
EBay is the worst website someone can use for shopping…they just got it all wrong. Seems lead by people who don’t use it
I found Ryan cohens account
I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.
Haha, I ordered my car wing mirror cowl and it arrived in a box with an Amazon gift receipt. I suppose the eBay fellow was solving a discovery problem for me for a cut. Good for him.
IIRC that's against eBay's rules. But people still do it when the spread is enough to make it worth the risk.
Ebay is no less shady. Buy something(from China) that takes a long time to arrive, reviewing is disabled. Ebay is junk.
You 60 days from delivery or 90 days from ordering if there is no expected delivery date.
How long is your stuff from China taking to arrive?
AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.
If only they would sort out their language / shipping country / currency model and make it so I can actually select what I want rather than their wrong assumption.
(And that's me having that problem in English / England / GBP, not a weird combination.)
As a Canadian with a no forex credit card, I’ve found it cheaper to pay in USD, so it is.
I also get a lot of “Dear CA Customer” type emails.
I recently dealt with a merchant in Aliexpress who was intentionally selling things well below market price, not to build their storefront reputation, but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel. I forced them to cancel the order, which harms their rep.
Literally every unmanaged, user content controlled platform devolves into the basest scams, thuggery, and unpleasantness. This is why we can’t have nice things.
> Literally every unmanaged…
> This is why we can’t have nice things.
i think you’ve hit the nail on the head. it’s the unmanaged part. it isn’t clear to me how We collectively are shocked when these marketing and execs convince us “oh, there’s nothing we can do. having customer service would be cost prohibitive. making sure there are no scams would be cost prohibitive. etc… etc…”
how about you get some customer service and protect us from scams and don’t buy your third private island and fourth mega yacht and have net worth larger than a lot of countries?
oh, that’s asking too much. you’re right, “nothing” can be done.
Recently I attempted to return an item to AliExpress. They gave me a USPS return label with a domestic address that Google Maps showed as some generic office building. This address turned out to be an undeliverable and the package bounced back to me. Support couldn't explain it and said I'd have to pay for a replacement label since I guess they only pay for one return per order. I filed a chargeback instead. It was approved immediately. Surprisingly, AliExpress didn't ban my account or card, and I still shop there instead of equally terrible Amazon or eBay.
YMMV a lot with Aliexpress. I bought a $700 chiller that arrived without a small attachment fitting for the return inlet line. I complained, received another chiller (with the fitting) free. Go figure.
It’s as if all the people working at physical stores, who we decided were pointless waste of money, actually had some function.
>but to collect sales and then ask the customer to cancel
How does that help them?
A particular number goes up which matters too much to someone with too much power, conceivably.
I only had good experiences with the customer service. Do they wanna have long conversations? Nope. But they are quick to just give you a refund.
Same experience here. That is the most-correct answer, isn't it?
When the whole thing goes like this, then I really do find that I have no reason to complain:
Customer: "Hey, this widget is broken/never showed up/etc"
Rep: "Refunded"
Amazon, Walmart, Etsy... my kingdom for a marketplace that doesn't become just a dumping ground for shady fly-by-night dropshippers.
This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)
Thermoworks (which makes excellent thermometers) no longer sells on Amazon b/c there were too many counterfeits/people selling broken items etc.
You can now only order from their website which I am more than happy to do as their customer service is excellent.
https://www.thermoworks.com
Don't allow 3rd party sellers?
I think that is key. I used to browse Best Buy's website for various electronics and it was typically pretty good. I knew that somewhere, a Best Buy product buyer was evaluating the products with at least a minimum set of expectations. Then they opened their marketplace to 3rd party sellers and it's the same low cost, low quality crap on every other site.
But then how could you skim off the top of other people’s work?
It depends on the brand, but a lot of the stuff I buy is available directly from the manufacturer's site, usually via Shop Pay.
Amazon could easily solve this problem if they wanted to. They just don't want to.
"We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and work backwards." - Jeff Bezos
Backwards indeed.
The dropshippers are the customers of Amazon’s platform, in a way…
Of course not. They _created_ this problem.
Its been "day 2" at Amazon for a long time now. I guess the Leadership Principles need an update.
That's a problem for you — the customer - not for Jeff, the VP.
Maybe the customers are Amazon shareholders now and Amazon is selling Amazon's financial performance.
> leave a product review in exchange for a free bed scrunchie accessory
I wonder what the exact language was. If it included something like “5 star review” on that card, then the guy deserves getting kicked out from Amazon and getting his business shut down (it’s federally illegal to do that per ftc regulation). If it was just very neutral language asking for reviews, then that sucks, and hope he can get it resolved with Amazon eventually.
In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon:
* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.
* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.
* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.
So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).
Yep -- I've gotten multiple postcards in the mail and/or product box after ordering something telling me I'd get ~$5-$10 if I left a 5 star review. They thoughtfully included exact screenshots of how to submit the review.
I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere.
(I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).
So Amazon could have logged who performed the action(based on logon details) and catch the culprit.
The article says that they did do this.
Still use Amazon for certain items because of fast delivery but the site is a complete mess. At some point Amazon leadership failed to understand that there’s a lot more to a good customer experience than “selection size.”
If I search for X I’d vastly prefer a few simple options that aren’t counterfeit or junk vs here’s 150 variants of your thing, most of which are junk but hey look at the size of our selection!
10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal.
I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.
I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!
As I'm sure you know but some others might not, the random brands with unpronounceable names (as opposed to no specific names at all) are also a problem that Amazon has created: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/amazons-quiet-overhaul-of-the-t....
google.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.
I do my best to find a local or online shop that actually knows & understands what they sell. Getting harder, but for more expensive items definitely achievable.
I have yet to find something on Amazon that I couldn't find at a local shop for within 5% of the Amazon price. I live in a very rural area, so I have to imagine that it's easier if you live near a city. Or maybe my sample size of 1 person isn't enough.
A lot of things are actually LESS expensive in stores. All that speedy delivery adds a lot to costs that are baked in. Sometimes things on Amazon are 50+% more. You have to know your prices to know what’s a good deal vs what’s a total ripoff.
IE folks will take a 4 pack of something that sells for $20 and sell each bottle individually for $10 each.
My rule of thumb is that every not-heavy product has about $7 of shipping costs baked in somewhere. For cheap items, there isn't enough markup to cover those costs, so they are usually higher priced than at retail. If it's $50 or more, there usually is, and the amazon price will be competitive or better than retail.
For heavy things the shipping ding is bigger, but they also usually cost at least $30. No one bothers to sell $5 items like 50lb bags of basic sand on amazon.
AI chat interface works where search does not. Not perfect, but much better, and allows more specific, accurate filtering.
"This item will arrive tomorrow at 9 AM" -> Pay -> "Sorry this item can't be delivered by tomorrow will be delivered 2 days later" -> Next day -> "This item will be delivered 3 weeks from now"
It's not common that they miss those timed delivery windows, in my experience... but when they do their systems don't seem to be able to handle it well and the delay is far worse than it would have been if it _weren't_ a timed window. I suspect it's related to the timed deliveries mostly being farmed out to gig drivers.
OMG yes this. So annoying.
It’s like Uber saying book and pay for a ride, cars are 2 min away. Great here’s my money, send a car. 15 min later still waiting for car…
I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.
I'm not sure that's "catching on". One would think that if they can't reliably offer a service, they shouldn't be offering it in the first place.
At what percentage 'failure' rate (that is can't be shipped in 2 days) should they cancel 2 day shipping?
sounds like fraud to me
This has been going on for a decade.
The only thing I use Amazon for is price guidance - is that hardware $1, $2, $10 or $100?
I have not bought from them since 2005.
There is no need
1999 or maybe 2000 for me. Dollars are votes for how I want to see the world.
People. Stop making '20 calls' about this sort of thing.
If you get ripped off by a corporation, you call once. Take notes. Maybe call twice. At most, three times. Show you made a decent attempt. If you're in a one-party consent state, record it.
Then call your lawyer, who will send a demand letter to Amazon legal.
If that doesn't get an answer, you go to court. If you can't work something out, you go to court.
The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
What do you think Bezos does when a contractor takes his money and doesn't fix one of his dozen swimming pools? Or a car dealership fucks up one of his hypercars?
Do you think he makes 20 calls to customer service numbers? Or do you think one of his personal assistants calls once and asks politely, and then if it isn't made right, it gets batted over to his law firm.
That costs a lot of effort, time and money, all of which are in short supply nowadays.
The seller in the article read doing $500k/mo.
Wasting 2 months not getting any sales is far more costly than spending a few grand on a lawyer.
> The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.
Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.
But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.
There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.
Non-paywall version: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-06-30/shadow-bri...
Thanks! We've switched to that from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/inside-th... above.
Gods work, thank you!
https://archive.is/hioIm