The Downfall of Amazon: Dangerous Products, Fake Reviews & Vanishing Brands
The Downfall of Amazon: Dangerous Products, Fake Reviews & Vanishing Brands
The quality of stuff being sold on Amazon has been a race to the bottom for a while now, somewhat following in the steps of Ebay.
In this video Louis has two crimp butt connectors: one bought from Amazon and one bought from a hardware retail store - the Amazon purchased one, which a regular user of the site may consider as reputable at a glance, fails to crimp the wires securely. The hardware store one however securely crimps the wires in place.
It's a pretty mundane example, but extends across to other products in other industry verticals too. A pretty major concern raised in the video was that the failure of this specific product would cause excess heat, potentially leading to an electrical fire in the worst case scenario.
There's also the issue of reputable brands not even listing their products on Amazon anymore, leaving users with mostly poor quality alternatives shown prominently in search results.
Personally I find myself preferring to shop at dedicated or independent online storefronts, where it's a bit more obvious what exactly I'm purchasing, and where there's at least some minimum guarantee of quality - in contrast to a Prime "dropshipped", generic product from Amazon. Also kind of like the fact that by purchasing from sites that aren't massive marketplaces or outlets, real individuals benefit from my custom, not massive behemoths that don't need the sales to survive
Piped link in comments
Imagine having to plan what silly reaction face you are going to pull to advertise your video
Why do so many do these YouTubers do these stupid faces for their video thumbnails? It's one of the most rediculous things there is.
Initially items were cheaper. The prime got then to you fast but the deals were largely gone. Then it was the simple return policy if the quality wasn't there. Now they're hoping we still just choose Amazon out of habit I guess?
Largely the only things I get from Amazon anymore are commodity products where I'm expecting the Chinese knockoff experience, and it's priced accordingly. For that type of stuff it's basically Alibaba but faster and slightly less annoying.
For anything mission critical I'll purchase from an actual supplier. Mouser, Digikey, etc. Or the manufacturer directly, if the option exists. Typically the "deals" on Amazon aren't, really, and if you're going to purchase a big ticket piece of equipment you can get all the same stuff just buying direct... free shipping, returns, etc. The only exception is some small time manufacturers who will only sell on Amazon, using it as their sole storefront so they don't have to maintain their own.
You really have to know what you are purchasing on Amazon.
For example, I like when major brands have a storefront. I then compare prices at multiple distribution points and purchase from the best. Sometimes Amazon wins but usually other outlets get my business.
The most annoying trend recently is the online pricing versus in-store pricing being radically different. Office Depot, Target, Walgreens, and many others have gotten stupid about this especially with electronics. My new hobby while standing in line at checkout is to validate the pricing of everything I am purchasing.
I almost always end up finding something radically different.
Honestly? Some of the shit sold on Amazon can be had on AliExpress for a fraction of the price.
Just bought a bunch of espresso accessories, they are LITERALLY 5-6x the price on Amazon for the EXACT same product.
Some sellers on there even have 5 day shipping. I’d rather wait.
I find it difficult to even find name brand stuff there. You have to specifically search for a brand if you don't want to get lost in a sea of random ass popup companies from China that are named as some random word like Beegu, Houndd, or Keepee, usually in ALL CAPS.
Does that (searching by brand) actually work for you? I can search the specific brand and model and still get flooded with nonsense results that are neither the brand I'm looking for or anything like the actual thing I want. Other websites like Newegg I can filter results, but the filtering on Amazon results is useless.
Yes, that stuff is bad but there is far worse. Amazon has an abysmal safety record and treats its warehouse employees like shit, it doesn't take the security of customer data seriously and it lies about its environmental impact.
Yeah, but this issue actually affects ME
/s in case it wasn't obvious
reputable brands not even listing their products on Amazon anymore
Amazon's return policy is not good for vendors, so brands should definitely avoid it if possible. 30 days return for 100% refund for any reason at all, plus vendor pays return shipping.
I don't know the ins and outs of the vendor side of things on Amazon, but as a customer who made the horrific mistake of buying from a 3rd party vendor on Amazon somewhat recently, my experience doesn't exactly align with what you're saying.
In my case, the fairly expensive item I ordered arrived broken. I contacted the manufacturer (because there was a card inside the box that advised me to contact them first), they waved me off and told me to take it up with Amazon.
I contacted the vendor on Amazon, they told me that they don't offer refunds on items that they drop ship (as though I was supposed to know that up front) and declined to assist/refund. Then I contacted Amazon since they have an "A-to-Z" "guarantee", but in order to get the refund I had to pay to send the heavy, broken item back to the vendor who had already admitted it was drop shipped and had never been in his possession to begin with.
The ordeal literally took 10+ hours of my life. And while I did ultimately end up finding just the right customer service agent eventually who "refunded" the return shipping as a "courtesy" (but not as a direct refund, only as Amazon bux), had I not been super persistent and willing/able to waste so much of my time, I would have been the one on the hook for that pricey return shipping cost.
So my guess is Amazon is probably screwing everybody over as much as possible, vendors and customers alike.
Gotcha. Yeah the vendor can put it in the terms to have customer pay the shipping, but that really pisses off customers enough to leave bad reviews, so any decent vendor won't do that. I've tried that before for just a few days and got bad store feedback and negative product review too.