I wonder if Amazon Essentials also plays into the quality problems that they have. I often buy Amazon Essentials because it's the easiest way to find a product that isn't a fly by night knock off.
I completely disagree, the quality of products on Amazon has gone downhill over the past 5 years. You may attribute this to influx of bad merchants but it really comes down to Amazon not having the same incentives to properly rank items and remove bad actors. Instead it created Amazon Basics brand and steers users towards it. The influx of misc brand names and items that look exactly like each other just helps confuse consumers and make them lean towards Amazon Basics.
Amazon overall quality has droped in recent years.
I use to buy from Amazon because I knew I was buying original brands and no chinese cheap copies. Well, that changed a lot. There are specific things that I still buy from Amazon but on most things there's almost no difference between they and Aliexpress. I can buy the same products from Aliexpress way cheaper and have them delivered in 2-3 days.
Thankfully there are a lot of small online shops where quality and customer support are taken very seriously. The bad thing is these stores are very specific so if I need different unrelated products I have to buy from several stores, having to pay sometimes a few euro for the delivery. This also made me buy less stuff. Now I generally wait until I need more things or until my cart has enough stuff for a free delivery.
I haven’t had too many (any?) quality issues with Amazon I’m no shill - I don’t advocate for them since I’ve heard about plenty of quality issues, but I’ve never actually gotten the wrong product or a fake (unless the fake was so good it was equal to original… which is fine?).
What is everyone ordering that is subpar? Do people not just buy the same brands they’d buy at Walmart or target?
If you buy cheap stuff that was drop shipped off AliExpress, but reputable name brands from walmart… why not buy reputable brands from amazon?
I think the big problem with Amazon is that they stopped caring about the quality and provenance of the products on their platform. Other retailers do exist who have more of a stake in the quality of the goods they sell.
If you buy Amazon basic brand items you don’t have to worry. And the Amazon basic products are generally really high quality, from clothes and more high end niche items to daily necessities, Amazon basics items are best in class. People who complain about Amazon are usually buying crappy items from dodgy vendors, and then they idiotically blame Amazon.
It's weird...I've been a customer since 2000, and still shop there daily. I hear a lot about counterfits and terrible quality, but my purchases are almost universally perfectly satisfactory for my needs. I think I'm using Amazon differently from others, but I can't figure out the difference.
My biggest issue with Amazon is that most of the products listed are garbage. I went from spending an average of $20k/yr on Amazon to spending less than $500/yr. I now refuse to buy on Amazon unless it's a product /from/ Amazon, which is mostly digital books because I have a Kindle and a I read a lot. Once my local grocery store started offering same-day delivery of groceries and other sundries, almost all my expected Prime purchases can just go to the local grocery. Everything else, I am more concerned about quality than almost anything else, and Amazon just fails for every product category to offer discoverable high quality options.
I am sure Amazon executives don't care, because most consumers are price-motivated, not quality motivated, but I basically only buy things online directly from the manufacturer now or an authorized brick and mortar retailer I can call on the phone and get confirmation of the product before receiving it. Amazon is just full of garbage, mostly "brands" that are all the same Chinese junk off Alibaba, and if it is a major brand, it ends up often being counterfeit. Completely untrustworthy, and it makes me sad, because historically as a consumer I liked the experience of buying on Amazon.
What's more shocking is unprompted, my parents and siblings are also now avoiding Amazon. In many cases they've been buying through Walmart with in-store pickup, because that fits into their day-to-day life and has a much higher quality bar. Yes, Walmart quality is higher than Amazon quality in basically every product category.
Buying stuff on Amazon has just become second nature to me. I've gotten hard to find hot sauce, books, and laundry detergent despite the fact that I live literally across the street from a whole foods because of the convenience. My apartment complex recently installed an Amazon Hub as well. I've never really had an issue w/ the quality of goods or counterfeits and Prime is a great deal if only for the 2 day shipping and Prime Video.
I think the issue is less that the goods are of low quality (actually direct-selling private-label goods seems to partly be intended as an anti-counterfeiting measure) and more that manufacturers who sell on Amazon are crying foul because Amazon is undercutting them.
As a long-time customer (since the late 90's) I am also frustrated with Amazon these days because it's now impossible to judge the quality of the products as the website is swamped with cheap asian knock-off products, fake brands and fake reviews. It feels like 2/3 of all items are Aliexpress offers, just more expensive. It's probably a good window of opportunity for a competitor with some minimum quality guarantees and otherwise similar functionality.
It happens, but it's not common. Amazon lets you get stuff a generation ahead of what's in stores, which often uses better tech and fixes issues in the last generation.
When "Cheap crap" first became common 20 years ago stuff got a bit worse, but it seems to be improving.
I have been doing the same, Best Buy/Target/Walmart any big box retailer I know does some quality control. I have purchase way too many products from Amazon that broke immediately, just shockingly terrible quality. And the worst part is Amazon isn't cheap anymore, I have found that they have a 20-30% markup over their competitors and the cheap things just third party fake goods.
IMO buying the cheapest products on Amazon is like using disposable plates and utensils, sure the one time purchase is cheaper than buying dishes and real utensils, but over time it's way more expensive.
Honestly, opening a package from Amazon for a 5 star recommended item that you had high hopes for only to find a cheap piece of garbage is infuriating.
I feel that quality has dropped across the board, Amazon or not. At least in some countries, even the originally-reputable brick & mortar retailers now operate as a "marketplace", which means any search there is also full of dropshipped crap and the same shenanigans as Amazon.
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