I recently had to buy something mundane - a light bulb, with a specific lumen and color temperature spec. Weeding out all the junk listings, ads and clearly fake reviews, I ended up spending an hour trying to get to the one I wanted to buy.
Had a very similar experience for another product as well.
At this point, I hesitate to look up stuff on Amazon just considering the time it takes to find stuff. I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out.
It seems like Amazon’s philosophy of having the widest set of options for every product is actually not that useful in practice, at least for me.
The only reason I still keep going back is that they deliver many products on the same day to the neighborhood I live in.
> a light bulb, with a specific lumen and color temperature spec
Sponsored links are always useless and should only be scrolled past on Amazon.
Typical disappointing Amazon experience:
Search for LED 8W. First result, sponsored link to an 11W bulb. Then a sponsored link to a fake marketing 21 watt bulb with fake lumen marketing. Then a sponsored link to six pack of 14W bulbs. The 4th link returned is a sponsored link to a 8W designer clear glass thing which is at least not off topic.
Not all searches are as toxic as LEDs. If you search for "oil 5w-30" only 10% or so of search results are totally wrong (like 10w-30, or 5w-40)
Another hilarious search term "chocolate almond milk" most of the results are bulk almonds, some milk-product made of bananas, several oat milk results, chocolate almondmilk pudding (OK, close enough, but weird), protein bars made of almonds, some soy shake drink, starbucks frappuccino vanilla, pea-protein fake milk, admittedly at least 1/3 of results are on topic.
I just searched for "4-40 SHCS" (a SHCS is a socket head cap screw, like to fix a car part). About 2/3 of the results are on topic, but then Amazon throws in "D'Moksha Small Short Thanksgiving Holiday Navy Table Runner Or Dresser Scarf (14 x 36 Inch)", what? Some of it is just bizarre. I specified 4-40 size so I get a search result for 5/8-11 machine bolts. OK then.
Its getting hard to buy stuff on Amazon, like they're actively trying not to sell what you ask for.
I do EE type stuff at work and home and I am spoiled by professional sites like Digikey, if you search for a 1K resistor they present you with a parametric search result of 1K resistors, not random assortments of 74HCT logic chips or teddy bears or rolls of solder like Amazon would.
Shopping on Amazon has been painful. Just takes so long when a few years ago it seemed as if I can trust what is sold on Amazon and search is a lot more relevant that I don't have to scroll a few pages to find what I want.
Yet I still buy almost everything on Amazon, and I still go through the pains of navigating around the sponsored products. The checkout, shipping, and returns experience is why I still use Amazon - not sure how long that lasts
> I ended up spending an hour trying to get to the one I wanted to buy.
As someone who has been in the same situation I just go to my local Lowes/Home Depot now. The lighting section actually shows you what they look like turned on which is nice.
After doing some competitive price shopping it is rare that amazon's prices are competitive. I guess not having to go to the store is convenient?
> I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out.
With amazon's commingling of inventory this isn't a workable solution.
The dreaded comingling of inventory is just the cherry on top. A curated list is there opposite of Amazon Marketplace. For years I wished that it was easier to just keep all the marketplace offerings hidden permanently since I want to buy from Amazon and not someone I've never heard of. At this point it's all such a blurred mess.
For most products, at least in Europe you can get the same cheap junk of Amazon listings from eBay at 20-40% lower prices, and usually (slightly) higher quality one from brick and mortar stores at the Amazon price.
I avoid Amazon in principle since many years (unless I _really_ need a product there), but that has never been hard, considering that most smaller stores always offered me more convenient prices, less hassle in searching, and the relief of not giving money to such a controversial giant.
As someone who dislikes eBay and prefer to deal with companies, rather then individuals, the UKs preference for eBay is interesting. Working for an eCommerce site we noticed that customers would prefer to deal with a lady in Scotland over us, for certain types of products. She just posted our product on eBay, added a few £ to the price, ordered them from us, typed in her customers address in the shipping fields.
Worked out for everyone, given that her customers would rather order on eBay and pay a little extra, compared to dealing with us. We got the price we wanted, plus we didn't have to deal with customer service.
It's weird, one would expect eBay to be more of a wild west than Amazon marketplace, but in my experience the eBay sellers are fast and mostly trustworthy.
That's because on Ebay, there's seller feedback, and it's actually useful. People leave negative feedback if there's a problem, and the feedback is specific to that seller. If a seller has been on there for 20 years with a perfect 100% feedback score, you know they're trustworthy, and if they've been on there for 1 week with 0 feedback, you know they're not.
Amazon comingles listings from Amazon themselves, FBA, and independent sellers shipping things themselves, so there's not really a good way of telling if you'll have a good experience or not.
It's the same thing in Canada. It's easy to identify the mass produced Chinese products. You search for an item on Amazon and find 30 different "companies" with random names selling the identical product with different logos. The prices will range from $10-30. I know if I go to eBay I can buy the same product for $2 with free shipping from China. I only have to decide if I want the product delivered tomorrow through Amazon or in 1-2 months from China.
I ordered something from Amazon a few weeks ago, and didn't check the shipping time. I turned out that the thing was sent directly from China and took 2 weeks. The tracking that Amazon provides did not even work properly. There is really almost no reason anymore not to order the stuff on Aliexpress for 20% lower prices.
What I do sometimes is search the websites of the manufacturers of the product. Like for SD cards I'll search samsung.com, for hard drives westerndigital.com, for light bulbs maybe creelighting.com, etc.
More is less. Decision fatigue, terrible comparison shopping experience, nearly indistinguishable products. I think about this at the grocery store every time I look at yogurt or toothpaste, by the way.
For household stuff i started using Grainger and large hardware store more often, than amazon. It might be more expensive, buy i endup spending less time on a purchase.
Even when I have to resort to amazon, I usually end up using that info to find non amazon sites to purchase from. Why support a fake goods laundry service?
> The company applies the “Amazon’s Choice” badge to some products that are unsafe, mislabeled and violate its own policies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. The label appeared on dozens of products that were banned, didn’t meet safety standards and featured fake safety certifications. It was also applied to controlled substances, like steroids and marijuana products, the Journal reported.
> In other cases, “Amazon’s Choice” listings were manipulated with specific keywords that would ensure they’d be included in the recommendation engine. The Journal discovered some third-party merchants have developed ways to game the algorithms that help determine which products are featured, by pushing consumers to buy an item, which artificially juiced sales and made it appear more popular.
Had a very similar experience for another product as well.
At this point, I hesitate to look up stuff on Amazon just considering the time it takes to find stuff. I much rather prefer a curated list of products so someone else has done the weeding out.
It seems like Amazon’s philosophy of having the widest set of options for every product is actually not that useful in practice, at least for me.
The only reason I still keep going back is that they deliver many products on the same day to the neighborhood I live in.