Recently, I was shopping for a hard drive at a big box store and tried to filter by capacity ...
Recently, I was shopping for a hard drive at a big box store and tried to filter by capacity ...
I'm not even sure how many chickens I can fit on my current hard drive, but it's probably more than the number of persons I can fit.
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Automation has truly ruined online shopping. These days you can order from a respectable brandname on a big company website and find out later the seller is actually nanchangshishengyuedianzishangwuyouxiangongsi and they sent you a completely different product than advertised.
I remember back in 2013 I built a PC for my wife, and in 2014 one for myself. At that point, buying something online still felt a bit odd. It was reserved for specialty items, shipping would often take at least 2 weeks, or even 6 weeks depending on where it was coming from. I was no stranger to purchasing online, but brick-and-mortar stores with real stock still existed and could get me what I purchased much more quickly.
I remember being so impressed with Newegg's website. It made it so easy to build a computer and make sure everything was compatible. It was really easy to compare different options. The filter system was intuitive and comprehensive. I remember thinking "wow this is a perfect shopping experience. The future has arrived".
I went to build my next PC in 2019, and dear Satan was it so much worse. I had heard about Newegg getting bought out by a larger company in 2016, and it showed. They opened it up to 3rd party sellers. The filters got clogged with garbage and don't seem to work properly anymore. The sort function became a joke. The UI got rearranged to be less intuitive. I think they purposefylly wanted to make a worse shopping experience to make people frustrated, to get them to give up on looking for deals and pay a bit extra just to be done with it. I ended up having to go to a 3rd party website (PCPartPicker) to figure out what I needed and where to get it. And some of those parts I had to order on eBay (some even from Newegg's eBay account which is just.... Why are we doing this?), some on Amazon or Best Buy. And it's only gotten worse since.
This same experience has happened everywhere. Just this morning my wife was checking out Culture Hustle to see if they have any interesting new paints and commented on how much worse the website was now than when we last used it a few years ago.
This may make me sound like an old curmudgeon yelling at clouds, but I think the Internet peaked a while ago. There are arguments over exactly when, but sometime between 2008-2016. I remember in 2012 in talking to my fellow students about how Google search results were getting worse.
It's weird how Amazon kind of pushed every online store into becoming eBay (without the bidding... Do people still use eBay for auctions?)
The bidding is actually the main reason I never once used eBay but do use regular online store like Amazon.
Every electronic I own is basically from an eBay auction. It's a great place to buy from, their buyer protection is borderline too good... not such a great place to sell on. Although, what are you going to do, go to their other big competitors?..
So you use the actual auctions, and not just "buy it now"?
I remember back in the day when all they had were auctions, it was novel and cool. Then they added "buy it now" and the site slowly turned into Amazon.
95% of the time I do the auctions. Only do buyitnow if no other options, which isn't super common. I have got Ipads for 30-50 that still have a good battery even after using them for a couple years. A $50 laptop that does anything you would normally want a laptop to do. 8 kindles for $45 of which I sold 4 of them to my aunt for $45 to sell at a flea market and I kept and gave away the other four. 3 gallons of Legos for like $10... the list just keeps going.
My wife ordered a bunch of clothes off Amazon for the kids, they came out of the package still in their vacuum packed Chinese shipping bag.
The only saving grace is If they don't fit they're easily returnable. We probably could have ordered them from Alibaba for pennies on the dollar, But waited 6 weeks and assumed all the risk of a nearly impossible return.
Yeah, I remember a long time ago thinking Linkedin was useful and had some good articles. Now its gross.