Yeah we must. Nothing I but from Amazon is what I expect and top that off with it arrives late despite me paying for prime. I ordered a blender last week that doesn’t even blend, which I only realized after I had loaded it up with stuff to make a smoothie.

When things show up and actually are what I expect based off of the image and they work right it is a rare surprise.

Counting it up, I've ordered 58 times from Amazon in 2023 and every single item was exactly what I asked for, and arrived within a few days. I wonder why we're having such wildly different experiences...

It depends on the kinds of things you order and how attuned you are to the games they play. If it's all name brand stuff and you are careful to actually order from Amazon and not a store hosted by Amazon it's not bad (although there are a lot of counterfeit goods on the site, in mixed inventory so it can come directly from Amazon even if it was stocked by some other store).

If you're getting commodity stuff from the cheapest vendor, good luck. There's lots of stuff put in there by Chinese shops that's garbage quality, mislabeled, a miniature model of the real thing, etc.

I do think it’s helpful that I’m an Internet native/formerly in cybersecurity. I would buy the (flattering) argument that I’m passively filtering out the shit in a way that’s not intuitive for everyone.

I strongly agree that it's dependent based on what you order. I've had mixed experiences in the past so now I basically only use Amazon to order used books. I don't expect them on time (nor do they promise it) and they have almost every title I could ask for!

My experience is like yours. Amazon has been very reliable for me and the few times I’ve had a problem, their phone support people have fixed it.

I think one factor might be what city you are in. I’m in Austin and I think there must be a big warehouse nearby because it’s not that unusual for something I order to show up a few hours later.

FWIW, I placed exactly 100 orders in 2023.

That’s the thing, I’m not in a city, my backyard abuts a farm!

I'm about 45 minutes outside a couple of major-ish cities (RDU/triangle area). I pass a goat farm just before my house (it's maybe a 1/3rd of a mile away). We still get most Amazon stuff next day, occasionally same day. I was a bit surprised, but here we are.

I think Amazon is a good platform to buy from when you know exactly what you want, or when you are good at researching and weeding out the crap. People who explore products on Amazon and make quick purchases, or impulsive shoppers in general probably have a bad time.

Yeah same here, 67 orders and no issues, perhaps it's a location thing?

Seems like an issue with people buying the cheapest stuff from brands no one has ever heard of. See previous comment, someone bought a blender that doesn't blend. Pretty sure if you buy a mid-high price blender on Amazon from a reputable brand, it will blend.

They were late delivering an NVidia GPU I ordered before Xmas and when I complained to the agent he was like "You know what, keep the GPU when it arrives. And I'm refunding the purchase price. And I'm sending you a $5 gift card now too."

So, Amazon bought my good will back again with that. They shouldn't have had to do it, though.

Same. Amazon used to be great. But just about everything I receive now is clearly a hastily reboxed return (including shoes and earbuds) or garbage.

I’ve been more and more ordering elsewhere. I order direct from the manufacturer when I can.

I haven't ordered anything from Amazon in years so I don't know how they are today. I imagine they are worse now. The last thing I ordered was a repair part for a washing machine. What I got was an obviously used, returned/repackaged, broken part. That's when I gave up.

If this were happening for everyone, Amazon would have a stock market reckoning.

You might be buying off-brand stuff.

But what you'd find at Target or Microcenter, and you'll have a good time.

Amazon has a problem with counterfeit products and cooking with them in the very least should be a health concern and at the worst a hazard

If you have a specific product that you are looking for and it is eligible for Prime then I have found this to be the experience.

Where I have not found that is if I am browsing, e.g. today I wanted to look for an evaporative humidifier. The top results are sponsored and for brands I have never heard of like YougetTech. I find I have to depart Amazon, Google / Reddit for things to get a sense of what the trusted brands are and then go back on Amazon to purchase it.

Isn't that true for all stores, though? If I'm buying something like that, I'll always search for reviews before deciding, whether or not Amazon is involved. Even if it's at a brick-and-mortar store.

The phrase "caveat emptor" was coined long before Amazon existed.

No. I can close my eyes and pick anything in Costco and it will be high quality for the money.

I'm genuinely baffled at your experience . I can't think of a single Amazon search I've done recently, not one, which didn't result in a page 1 filled entirely with drop-shipped Chinese junk with keysmash brand names like RETVUKOR. It has become almost entirely useless.

I have experienced almost the full cycle of enshittification. I remember when it arrived in my country (Spain). It was great. The catalog was very good. Customer service was very responsive. If I had a problem, they would return the money, no questions asked.

We were foolish to think that situation would last.

Nowadays the search is unusable. Unless you go to an individual brand's "amazon shop", you will only get products from UUMEBE, SYLTOM and YGWEEN. And "Amazon's pick" will be either Amazon's own product or TROWLY. Perhaps on the fourth page you will get a proper brand. You get products at $1 with a shipping cost of $67. Customer service now asks many questions. When you want to return something, the site uses dark patterns to try to nudge you into getting the products to the post office yourself instead of sending you a messenger. And the prime subscription price went up.

I cancelled my prime account. If I want Chinese quality merchandise there's a Chinese store very nearby where I can go and look at the plastic at least.

> If I want Chinese quality merchandise there's a Chinese store very nearby where I can go and look at the plastic at least.

You mean like the equivalent of sorting by lowest on eBay??

Like a Chinese guy I can walk up to and say, "I need a 120 foot HDMI and I will not be paying a cent over $22.43 for it because that's what's all the lowest cost sellers on eBay charge."

It's a kind of Chinese-owned, Chinese-managed physical store. It has a little bit of every kind of non-perishable product. From clothes to tools to toys to tupperware, directly imported from China. The quality is not high, but neither is the price, and they have an extensive offering. I think in the US is they have a similar kind of place called the "Dollar Store".

My experience has been similar to yours in that things at least "felt" nice and convenient. That is, until the brand new first aid kit I ordered came with the safety seal broken and hastily taped over. Who knows what was done to the product? What if it was resealed with better effort? How could I possibly trust anything from Amazon?

Maybe ignorance is bliss.

Search Amazon for "Whetstone". You'll find tons of quality products from legitimate brands, mixed indiscriminately with the exact same dropshipped trash item repeated over and over for countless pages. Amazon has been entirely enshittified.

What are your standards for quality?

I’m an enthusiastic amateur home chef. I have ordered some of these “trash” whetstones.

My knives get sharp. They aren’t damaged. The whetstone works over time.

If you are like a knife artisan, yeah I guess Amazon won’t work for you. But I’m guessing the results work for 99.9% of people.

Is a generic AliExpress whetstone good enough for most home chefs? I don't know, probably. But if I'm going to spend $40, I would rather do it on a high quality Japanese unit than something I can get for $20 on AliExpress. On Amazon they're priced and presented as alike, and that's a problem.

Realistically, that $20 difference pays for the product being in a warehouse near you, rather than a warehouse 5000 miles away.

But Amazon has both in their warehouse

I dunno how to square “tons of quality products from legitimate brands” with “entirely enshittified”…

Good quality stuff mixed with a lot of shit = shit

I could also make a more graphic analogy, but I don't think anybody needs to read that.

Having to care enough and educate yourself about how to tell the difference adds a lot of friction to the shopping experience. I have no qualms about buying from Amazon if I know exactly what I’m looking for and I’m shopping in a category where I’m at least pretty confident I’m not going to get counterfeit stuff (Apple accessories? Forget it).

But when I just need some basic household thing and don’t want to become an expert on the category, I often shop from other retailers where I can just be pretty sure they aren’t selling garbage.

Any porcelain measuring spoon someone like Crate and Barrel sells is probably a decent porcelain measuring spoon, but if I buy that on Amazon, I have to worry about which brands are legit so I don’t end up getting a spoon with porcelain-look paint that will flake off or something like that.

A marketplace where almost anybody can sell almost anything has a completely different level of trust than a store where professional buyer is making a conscious decision about what products they should carry - the presence of many low quality products dilutes the entire marketplace, even the quality products from legitimate brands

Google search results still have -some- useful links.

(I'm still having good results from amazon but I can understand 'entirely enshittified' as an opinion from people getting a similar thing there)

Your comment reads just like the reviews. Worthless