Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now. I've had enough unexpected surprises when buying from 3rd parties that I'm fed up with it. I see Amazon's new restrictions on 3rd party selling as being a good thing, although it seems the change is first affecting manufacturers who sell on the Amazon platform who are probably the least bad of the 3rd party sellers.
Overall, I see Amazon wanting to own more of the customer interaction as being a good thing for me as a customer. Buying and returning items from Amazon itself (not using 3rd party sellers) is a very good shopping experience for me and always has been.
Yet back in high school my step mom owned a small toy store (two locations), and was basically forced to start selling on amazon to get by... it changed the focus of the store and really ruined it for her.
Who knows maybe attitudes like this will be the (needed) downfall of the giant.
>Shopping on Amazon has gotten to the point where I actively try to avoid any 3rd party sellers now.
You can't really avoid it. Amazon comingles its inventory with that of 3rd party sellers who sell as FBA. So even if you choose Amazon as the seller, the actual product you receive could be the one a 3rd party seller shipped to Amazon's warehouses.
Are you sure about that? I vaguely recollect reading somewhere that the 3rd party vendors stocks were indeed shared as undifferentiated stock to optimize logistics, but that Amazon kept its own stocks separate over QA reasons.
>Do you mean, if I try to avoid fakes by buying from a seller I trust, i might get inventory from the one I was trying to avoid? This makes zero sense!
For new products, that is how Amazon does it. Which will explain why many products will have inconsistent reviews about fakes. And you can ignore any review that says "Avoid seller X. He sent me a fake!" You have no way of knowing which seller's item you got.
Note that this is only for "Fulfilled by Amazon" orders. For non-FBA, the seller ships it to you directly.
And for used items, Amazon will ship you the exact one from the seller.
This is counterintuitive, appalling, and the reason I'm not going to buy any such orders again. This HN posting has enlightened me enormously. For 'customers', it's such an appalling decision, and one which if European country regulation would have been implemented would probably be deemed illegal
I have gone so far as to advise my close relatives the same thing. "Look to see who the seller is -- and try to only buy from Amazon.com, even if it costs a small percentage more". I have had fantastic return experiences with Amazon. 3rd party sellers: Not so much.
As a FBA 3rd party seller (my product shows up as Sold by <my company name> fulfilled by Amazon. I'm the manufacturer of my product and it's the only thing I sell on Amazon.) returns are a nightmare since Amazon controls them. Amazon never questions the customer beyond a dropdown box for the return and penalizes the seller of the product.
On my Shopify store I have a tiny return percentage and an almost 0% defect rate. On Amazon people buy my product, decide they don't want it, and mark it as defective to not have to pay a return fee. Either the units I sent to Amazon have a 50x higher defect rate than the stock I ship out myself, or people are cheating the system.
When Amazon decides your defect rate is too high they remove your listing.
Just out of curiosity -- do you have free returns on your Shopify site? As a consumer I generally choose the sales path that will allow me the most pain free return if the product doesn't work out. I don't return often, but when I do -- I don't like a hassle.
Lots. Just this year: Opened "new" Makita power-tools where I can't be sure if the batteries are legitimate or knockoffs or old/refurbished ones in their place. Cracked sink that is still pending return after two weeks. Counterfeit Whirlpool filters for my air filter. Floor oil that was opened, spilling a little, and shipped in a bag alongside its non-spilling counterparts.
The only quality items I'm willing to order from Amazon now are small things like pens, and commodities. No more high tech stuff, no more camera equipment, etc.
Amazon has used 3rd parties for a long time, but they weren't shoved in your face as "Sponsored Results" until maybe a year or so ago?
Honestly, it makes shopping on Amazon feel more and more like a flea market. I especially don't like how Amazon now obscures the source of the product by emphasizing the "Prime Shipping Available". I find myself having to manually look to see if the product is sold by Amazon, or merely "Fulfilled by Amazon".
It's honestly an ugly experience these days. Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth?
> Is it worth bringing down your UX to Ebay/AliExpress levels for a little more growth?
That's exactly my thoughts on this. Ever since the marketplace opened up it's just become more and more like eBay/AliExpress, flooded with cheap knock-offs and dubious products.
I still have Prime for regular purchases, but find myself buying special items from specialized sellers (car parts, gym equipment, etc.)
That's not a fair assessment. Ebay doesn't bait & switch fast/free shipping or swap vendors when you add an item to your cart. I am frequently disappointed by ebay's lack of polish, but I have never gotten the impression that ebay was actively trying to defraud buyers or enable such behavior from third parties. Amazon, on the other hand, is 100% guilty on both counts.
Fair point. My comment about Ebay had more to do with the weird split they had between "Bid Now" and "Buy it Now", and the confusion I faced when searching for a product and having to look at both the price AND shipping.
This was because Ebay took their cut off the sale price, not the shipping cost. So sellers would reduce the sale price and jack up the shipping rate, which is where they made their margins.
Haven't bought anything on Ebay in years, so I don't know if they cracked down on that practice.
eBay introduced sorting options such as "Lowest Price + Postage" which undermined sellers trying to slip-in excessive shipping costs.
Plus on eBay the shipping charged by each seller is clearly listed on the Checkout page. Amazon just lists a total shipping cost for the order and I have to remove and readd items to find the culprit charging too much.
Well, 'had' to. Now I just avoid Amazon and its dark patterns. eBay is still rather Wild West but it's sellers trying to rip me off, not the platform.
I worked at Amazon on a team that built a mobile point of sale application. We had one supplier for our card reader that was this family owned company. It was a super tight night company — They even had a wall of how long employees worked at the company and some were there over 40 years. That being said, we (Amazon) wanted to move to blue tooth card readers. What I heard is that we tried to strong arm them into doing what we wanted even though the company had so many other clients and we weren't a big enough priority for them to drop everything and focus on us. The relationship was so strained that when myself and a few engineers went down to debug something with the hardware team from the other company, we were told to walk on egg shells and be careful about what we said.
Amazon is taking a page out of Walmarts playbook. Both are juggernauts and won't fail overall. My hope is they help create new markets in the areas where they do fail.
What are the alternatives to Amazon? I'm sick of having to deal with fake reviews and potentially fake products. Nowadays I don't purchase anything critical on Amazon due to these sorts of problems.
Amazon doesn't seem to be at all interested in tackling these issues - it's only a matter of time before it degrades completely into something like AliExpress.
Buy directly from manufacturers or use smaller, more specialized retailers.
You'll probably pay around the same price, possibly even less. Worst part is that you might not get your package in two days, but you also won't have to pay for Amazon prime. In many, many cases retailers offer free shipping.
For knick-knacks(chinese garbo such as LED lights or whatever), car parts, etc. eBay is pretty good.
I don't shop at Amazon for the same reasons I don't shop at Wal-Mart. They have a history of using shady techniques to put competition out of business. I also don't buy that their treatment of the customer is as good as they claim it to be. Shopping on amazon had become a pain in the ass when I gave it up.
If amazon raises their Prime prices again, I'm out... I don't really use the Prime video services, which kind of suck and have limited use outside their Fire devices, which don't support Youtube thanks to their war with Google who created the Android base their fire devices use.
I'm generally clicking Seller: amazon.com in searches because I don't want to deal with other vendors for delivery issues, which is often a problem.
It's gotten just plain more difficult to use. And I'm finding myself more likely to go to local stores as a result. Not to mention, the 2-day shipping now often means that it'll be delivered 2-days from when it ships, which could be a few days out. Where it used to always ship out the same day for 2 days later for delivery. The increased number of people that are stealing packages left on doorsteps make me more leery.
It's getting close to a point where it just isn't worth it to me.
> I don’t really use the prime video services which kind of suck and have limited use outside their Fire devices
While I’m no fan of paying more for Prime either, Prime Video is supported on practically everything - Apple TV, Roku, PS4, Xbox One, iOS, Android, desktop browsers, various smart TV vendors, all in addition to their own range of really pretty cheap streaming devices and tablets. Amazon apparently really don’t care what device you use.
Unless it's Android TV (does work on the Shield TV, but UX is poor), other times I've used it the different seasons of a show were broken apart by season and hard to find/align last I did try. For the most part, their included content just doesn't interest me.
It may be a bit better. My other niggle is Hulu's Live TV doesn't work on NVidia Shield TV (their offline kind of works), but that's just an aside from a different company. I got a new 4k fire stick because of Hulu in particular. My GF watches a lot of the stuff in Hulu.
Walmart's treatment of the customer is terrible - a direct reflection of their treatment of their employees in my opinion. The same will soon be said of Amazon.
Which is a shame because I can remember a time when both offered amazing customer service.
There have been several generations of PhD psychologists working studiously to figure out how to manipulate the mind into buying extra crap you don't need. Our primitive monkey brains are little match.
After reading the article it looks like this is an early stage of Amazon trying to deal with the confusion and mess that the Amazon Marketplace is causing.
It does seem that way, but it feels to me that the better option would be a brand exclusive initiative where either the brand is the sole seller on Amazon OR Amazon themselves is the exclusive seller.
What's actually happening is that Amazon wants to be the only seller and is trying to strong arm popular brands selling directly on the platform.
Walmart has done amazing work at improving their online shopping experience to rival Amazon. Lots of stuff ships free 2-day shipping with no membership. Almost everything else is free shipping to either a Walmart or Neighborhood Market. To my knowledge there's no issues of fake products from Walmart.
Free shipping to their grocery store (Neighborhood Market) is the best deal for me. I can order my groceries for "pickup" so I just park in a designated spot and someone brings my groceries. While I'm there I pick up my regular packages. And if there's a problem, you can return to a physical Walmart where there's at least a human to talk to.
I haven't ordered from Amazon in about a year, instead buying from a number of alternatives. It's a little more expensive and a little more of a pain sometimes, but I'm just that turned off by the Amazon.
For electronics, I'm lucky enough to live in a decent size city with a MicroCenter. But, I've also resorted to ordering items like phones and laptops for family members at their local Best Buy, which gives them the opportunity to pick it up same day. (It's also nice to be able to talk to a person when making expensive purchases like these.)
I ordered an InstaPot and some Hue bulbs directly from the respective sites. Wal-Mart's delivery and pick-up options aren't bad, but I try to avoid them and go with Target if buying from that sort of store.
Honestly, it's the weird little things I have most trouble finding, like braille keyboard overlays or specific Halloween decorations.
The alternatives are everywhere - you just have to let go of the idea of replacing Amazon with another single, giant everything-store. It will be multiple stores.
I recently noticed that all my hobbies and/or niche interests are better served by specialized shops dedicated to the interest in question - whether it's studio equipment, computer hardware, bikes, outdoor equipment, fashion, music, HIFI, furniture...you name it.
What Amazon still does best is delivering common, everyday items. I don't want to register at countless, small third party stores to do one-off purchases of low cost, everyday items that don't really matter to me. Amazon with Prime still shines here. And no, since I live in a rural area going to a brick and mortar store down the street often isn't an option.
Open your own brand store on eBay and ship stuff yourself. Lots of smaller e-commerce retailers do it. Many current Amazon sellers also sell on eBay. Unless you're relying on Amazon to hold your inventory it doesn't make sense not to sell on every platform you can.
I still find value in specific things, like subscriptions for common household items; however, I am inclined to agree with you on most tech items and other goods that are easy to counterfeit. Not worth the risk and hassle vs spending a little more to circumvent that grief.
Best Buy will price match Amazon and other online retailers, providing same day local pickup of authentic products. The entire process can be done online via chat, takes about 10 mins, once you have a URL to prove the price.
I don't understand why people think price matching is a good experience at all.
Do you really think that 10 mins in a chat trying to prove that you found a better price is a good experience? Same when you're in the store, looking up for the product online in your phone and chasing a floor rep to beg for the price match.
Price matching is the biggest marketing illusion I have seen to hide the fact that you're more expensive and less convenient.
The ideal customer experience should be always going into a BestBuy trusting that I will get the best possible price from any retailer. Not this scavenger hunt of prices that people claim to be great.
Amazon engages in dynamic pricing, meaning prices can shift very frequently (multiple times per day), -and- vary by geographic region.
What you are suggesting would require every Best Buy store (or whomever) to, independently, track the pricing they see across every competitor they wish to price match, and update their posted inventory pricing (which requires manual labor to print out a pricing sticker and go put it on the shelf, even if the actual computer system updates automatically). All to reduce their own profit margins.
What benefit to them? They can offer price matching, as they do, and everyone who cares about that will take on the chore themselves. Even if they had a brick and mortar competitor who was willing to do that work and that expense (installing digital price displays on every shelf so it could automate updating pricing, and had systems that were polling Amazon every minute, say, and even if they had reason to believe Amazon wouldn't block their IPs because it looks like a DDoS attack), the number of customers who would understand and appreciate what that meant is so low they'd still be massively in the hole.
So, yes, that might be the ideal customer experience. It's also undeliverable.
This is one of the (growing) reasons I dislike Amazon. Several times I've found a decent deal that I know a friend or family member would like - sent it to them, only for them to discover (sometimes just minutes later) that the deal has suddenly vanished.
On the face of it, Amazon is doing this as a simple function of supply/demand, though it sure could be construed as form of bait-and-switch pricing!
Most of the things I bother with price matching on will require some sort of human interaction in a store to get anyway. Large items, expensive items, etc.
It typically takes me less than a minute to validate price on an item like this while in-store and inform the person I'm talking to. Response time from there can vary a bit but at my local MicroCenter it takes them less than a minute to do a quick confirmation of their own, then mark and sign a sticker. That's it. But nobody at any store has ever asked me to beg or made it feel like it's begging to ask for a price-match.
Once, those 2 minutes saved me $800 when I was buying two monitors. The $999 MSRP to knocked down to $599 due to a sale at a competitor. There was no negotiation. The sales guy just blinked in surprise for a second when confirming it and said "Yeah, we can match that." To be fair, for this purchase I knew their price and their competitor's before showing up because I checked out their inventory on their website.
Yes, it would have been cool if they tracked their competitors' prices and automatically updated their own price (and had employees adjust the corresponding in-store price tags at every store) each time any of their competitors had a sale or lower price.
Frankly, though, that burden is not on the store selling the product. They probably would go out of business doing something like that without a huge competitor-matching supply chain behind them that can support universally thin margins. As a consumer, if I want the best possible price then I need to be willing to waggle my thumb across my phone at least a little bit to look for it.
Totally. I do it too and also have saved money by price matching things. The backwards thing is that besides all the technical limitation of price tracking that was already discussed in this thread, the ultimate motivation behind strategies like price matching or rebates, is that they give the customer the feeling that they are beating the system, but really is just an extra psychological incentive to get you to purchase something.
> Price matching is the biggest marketing vaporwave I have seen to hide the fact that you're more expensive and less convenient.
Do you mean vaporware? Vaporwave is a music genre and aesthetic style. Although I'm not sure if vaporware fits into your sentence either; I think shovelware would work better.
Don't forget about not supporting Amazon. This, for me, is the number one reason why I would price match elsewhere. Amazon could benefit from a little competitive pressure.
Amazing that your self-entitlement to having cheapest prices at-all-costs blinds you to the benefits people find in a brick-and-mortar location, such as being able to physically inspect the actual product, before bringing it home within the same hour of purchase.
Problem is, Amazon is becoming an online monopoly and this policy has a pretty fast slippery slope to - we don't want you as a customer for many, many reasons including: you post unfavorable reviews, you tend to only buy things on-sale...
I've never run into this problem personally, but they've only started doing it recently. I would not feel comfortable shifting all of my purchasing to BB because of the 2-week return window and the possibility that they would blacklist me without notice. If they had some sort of warning system that would make me feel much better.
On the, um, third hand, if the alternatives are to impose restocking fees across the board, or to resell returns as new, these policies seem reasonable.
I think it's absurd that I have to price match bestbuy.com when I buy something at the store. It's like they're actively trying to kill shopping in the store.
Worse: I once had to price match bestbuy.com from my phone in-store, because the special online price didn't appear when accessing bestbuy.com through the store's own Internet connection!
Perhaps it was a fluke, but if intentional, this strikes me as borderline fraud.
Does this happen often? Usually the SKUs and prices are identical. I've had an issue with packaging that looks similar, but varies slightly e.g. bundles which are different SKUs. Those are not usually price matched.
I think so. The cashier checked .com with her phone to verify my claim. I can see them not changing signage to reflect constantly changing online prices, but I'd expect them to ring up the same OR have some sort of * next to the price in their POS indicating it's on promotion online.
A lot of people avoid conflict, so it's just easier to buy online than ask for price matching in store.
Almost anything you can find on Amazon you can find at another online retailer with a quick search. And anything that has a brand name (that isn't a commodity, e.g. batteries, or store brand) can probably be found on the brand's own website.
Here's an example: the other day I was buying some funny socks as christmas presents. They sell on Amazon as well as their own store. The price was the same on both, but I would get free shipping, and faster shipping, from Amazon. Nonetheless, I chose to buy directly from the company because I don't like the way Amazon does business sometimes, and because buying directly gives smaller retailers a bigger cut.
As I've been running and growing a few very small online retail operations myself, I feel a lot better about supporting other small businesses directly.
One comment on Newegg... similar issue to Amazon marketplace, pretty much want to select newegg as the seller, or you may be waiting a month for products shipping from China.
Depends on the brand. The larger ones sometimes have their own online storefronts. Other times, smaller retailers have online storefronts that work well enough.
Shipping isn't as fast or as cheap when using anything other than Amazon, though, so that's worth considering.
If you want to see what a wholesale relationship with Amazon looks like, check out Amazon Advantage (https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-product-page.htm...) which media publishers use to sell physical product through Amazon. 55% discount off MSRP, demands to ship single units to warehouses scattered across the country, no shipping discounts, no payment until goods sold, and badly designed algorithms that usually order far too much. Some media publishers are leaving Amazon Advantage because they can't make money (see http://articles.ibpa-online.org/article/breaking-up-with-ama...), pricing higher so they can make a decent margin, or simply telling Amazon that there is no more inventory.
What I don't understand is the fake products. Been buying tons of stuff on amazon, never got a fake product. What are you guys buying that you're getting fakes of? Things like Apple chargers, SD cards, those things I can see being fakes, but what else? And if you get a fake you literally just call amazon and say hey, this is counterfeit, refund me.
I used to have the same take, I couldn't understand people complaining about fakes because I never got any. I just assumed people were careless with their shopping.
But then I started getting fakes on things I buy all the time. Fake AA batteries, not Duracell but Duracell knockoffs. They last half the time and you can peel the Duracell label off to see another label beneath. Bought a steel water bottle and it was not the right brand at all. Bought a Swissgear backpack and not the right brand at all. Bought a white artificial Christmas tree, same brand as I had seen in stores and when I got it, it was a normal artificial Christmas tree wrapped in white electrical tape. Not the same brand I had purchased.
You can refund, sure, but that's a huge hassle. I ordered something, paid for it, waited for it to get here, then can't use it until I get refunded and order another one? Why would I do that more than once or twice? If it keeps happening, anyone would switch to not buying from that place again.
I've gotten fake or counterfeit razer blades, usb hubs, cables, batteries, and other small electronics. I switched to using Aliexpress for hobby stuff, at least I'm not paying a premium for generics there.
Some fakes are hard to discern because they are easy to clone, like small bottles of anti-fog spray or generic kitchen supplies. I imagine more slipped through than I know of as a result.
Each time you have to chat into Amazon, then send the item back (taking your time, refund held until it arrives), and then find an alternate to purchase since they can't guarantee a reshipment will be legitimate either.
I bought it and it was a counterfeit book. Pretty sure if you buy it there you will get either a counterfeit book or an international edition which has significantly lower print quality.
Maybe I'm misreading the article, but it seems like Amazon is trying to fix the atrocious third party and counterfeit seller problem that people have been complaining about for years?
How does this work if they don't allow the goods producer to sell on their market place (or their affiliates) but any willing third party to sell the same good?
Hacker News posters are the most hyperbolically negative folks on Amazon that it's almost funny. I always groan when clicking on Amazon-related comments because I know it's just going to be people complaining about god-knows-what. And yet, the company thrives.
HN may be down on Amazon but whether or not a company is 'thriving' is not always tied to whether the company is doing the right thing, or even heading for disaster.
Amazon is probably not going to fall apart over night, but it doesn't mean all of their actions are taking them in the right direction.
This sounds like a repeat of the process Walmart went through. As they become the reseller that's too big to ignore, they can start dictating the terms of the relationship.
Can't speak for anyone else, but personally I only buy a limited range of products from Walmart. Their quality tends to be so low, and service as well that I just don't shop there. I know they've become an online competitor to Amazon, but I don't even think to look most of the time because I've tuned them out.
I don't think I'm the only one. I am certain that Amazon is starting to lose customers because of bad returns experiences via the marketplace alone. They keep raising the price of Prime to fund other products that I don't use. There's a limit to what people will continue to pay for. Although Amazon is really good at knowing where that line is.
I've argued [0] that what people see as a bug (obvious counterfeit products) is actually a feature that will lead to increased profits for Amazon. I can't understand why people think Amazon would be so quick to stop it...
I have cut back in my use of Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. These companies are dangers to consumers and developers at their current scale. I'm not sure that is debatable either.
As much as I like capitalism, these tech giants have power that worry me.
Apple exerts pressures and demands on it's ODMs similar to what Walmart did on vendors in the 90s. Google all of the troubles Foxconn has been having with it's workforce, this is primarily due to it's relationship with Apple.
And don't forget their war with 3rd party repair options, which does not help them, since their own options are overpriced, and generally their genius techs are less knowledgeable.
This article is mostly alarmist nonsense. Vendors would welcome the addition of Seller tools to Vendor Central. Vendors do not have access to the Marketplace APIs, get watered down reporting, and are generally treated like suppliers where Sellers are treated like customers.
In addition, this is not a new shift in policy for Amazon. They have never allowed a product sold by Retail to be sold by the same Vendor on Marketplace. They would have to compete on price with the Vendor for that item and would win absolutely zero buy-boxes. If anything, Amazon has softened on this stance recently. They now are open to "hybrid" sales models which allow the Vendor to sell & fulfill items that Amazon cannot profitably sell itself because of the always on price-matching in Amazon's pricing engine.
One gripe that many have about Amazon is their hands-off approach to policing non-authorized listings of products. Many small time players will simply purchase products through a myriad of channels and sell them on Amazon, sometimes attaching them to the Vendor listing, and sometimes creating fake UPCs and listing the product as a separate item. This causes customer confusion and a bad customer experience because of duplicate listings or unknown sellers & fulfillers on a Vendor's listing. Of course, Amazon has no incentive to police these listings because they still collect the $99/yr fee from these sellers as well as 15% of any buy-boxes they do happen to win. Amazon makes money on these sellers for the cost of the hosting the minute traffic that ends up on these listings.
It may be a new written policy for certain categories, but I haven't been exposed to such a policy. A VM would have scoffed at the idea of allowing their vendor to sell the same product through Seller Central for years now. A vendor could discretely do this by setting up a 3P account and not telling their VM about it, but that's dishonest business and to be completely fair, you cannot honestly expect Amazon to allow that.
In the case of CRaP items, it's actually become a new strategy for VMs to allow some hybrid selling to keep assortment on the site while still allowing the company to turn a profit on the sale.
My mistake on the pricing of Seller Pro, but the point still stands.
Yes, however the burden of success on the platform is placed on the vendor, much like it is with sellers. Those sellers have access to many more tools which makes being successful much easier and allows for automation of most tasks on the platform (or integration with other specialized third-party tools.) Vendors are unable to do any of this despite the fact that they're responsible for many of the same tasks.
Much of this is due to the fact that Amazon takes on the inventory risk, handles fulfillment, and has tight control over pricing. These tasks are up to the 3P seller to figure out on their own. However, being able to handle these tasks does nothing for you if you are unable to generate sales. This burden falls on both Vendors and Sellers. Amazon's Retail team does absolutely zero merchandising, product management, or market analysis. They are simply worried about monitoring profitability in their category and pitching Vendors on programs involving lots of clawback. The tools available to Sellers to manage their products and traffic to their pages are much better and more complete than those available to Vendors.
Overall, I see Amazon wanting to own more of the customer interaction as being a good thing for me as a customer. Buying and returning items from Amazon itself (not using 3rd party sellers) is a very good shopping experience for me and always has been.