I'm gravitating more and more to using Walmart.com as a first stop. They seem to be ramping inventory way up, their site--especially search--is a pleasure to use compared to Amazon, and shipping is a minor differentiator, if any.
For books, I always check bookfinder before ordering from Amazon.
But if you get a funky product on Amazon, I would think that returning it would be a fine way of registering disapproval. It can't be that good for Amazon, and you can bet they're noticing both the product and the vendor when it happens.
On the other hand, I don't really trust amazon much these days because of fake reviews, and the ability for suppliers to switch out items for those of lower quality.
Walmart at least gives the appearance of curation for quality - It's at least easy to go see the quality of the things walmart is carrying. Amazon seems to be more of a crap shoot.
One extra problem with Amazon is that a lot of products are sold by third party merchants and their site UX seems to deliberately obscure the fact. Same goes for Walmart, though I have less experience using them.
If I order from Amazon, from Amazon, I tend to have good experiences. If I order third party from Amazon it’s a crap shoot.
IMO I don't really trust amazon reviews. I use amazon because they have a very effective shipping and return network and system, with a very broad set of items that pretty much nobody else reproduces. It's their fulfillment network essentially. Order from random retailers (even with shopify) and you're reminded why amazon is in the lead, with gotchas in return polices that get pretty irritating. Order from target / walmart and you notice how much is missing.
Amazon wins because it's more like visa or a physical goods internet than a specific store.
Amazon has mastered the art of selling cheap, crappy goods. At some point Walmart was the leader in this strategy but now Amazon has taken over the lead. I am increasing dreading to buy from Amazon because when you look for something you get 20 different listings of the same looking product with sketchy reviews. Their search also seems very manipulative sorting and showing and hiding of filter criteria based on probably an algorithm that benefits them.
I've tried my hardest to eliminate any Amazon order from my life this year. Whenever I needed books, or a receiver, or a nose trimmer I've made sure to shop at the category leader instead of Amazon. I've resorted to them twice, for weirdo stuff I couldn't readily find anywhere else. Well turns out the weirdo stuff only Amazon carries is crap, and I'm two for two on returns this year with Amazon.
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.
Same. In general I go out of my way to not use Amazon these days, coming from a customer who was a customer when they only sold books.
80% of the time I buy something from Amazon what I get feels very much like I went to a garage sale. Defective products, opened packaging, mismatch with what was on the site, etc.
Be careful jumping on the Walmart train. Their online marketplace has recently started including third-party sellers as well. I'm not sure how they police them or if they're any better than Amazon, but you're not implicitly free from these concerns just by going to Walmart.com instead of Amazon.com. I would guess that Walmart doesn't commingle stock from third-party sellers, since it's such a bad idea, but I don't know.
Jet.com also does third-party sellers, but I hear they are very strict and work hard to make sure that all their sellers are authentic.
Amazon has made itself the de-facto e-tail platform. We're already seeing a Google-like effect from them, where if Amazon is not happy with you, your business can be destroyed overnight. There are consultants similar to SEO consultants who try to ensure that your products always "win the buy box", some of which is certainly done through attempting to hit competitors with false negatives as you've described, much like the negative links that competitors try to register against one another to hurt their Google ranking.
I really hope that some of the other players in this game can get together and do something to stop another monopolistic pre-eminence. Between Shopify, ShopRunner, Walmart, and other brick-and-mortars who are jealous of Amazon, it should be feasible to create an Amazon-ish experience that will at least keep one or two other big competitors in the game. Let's do it before it's too late!
Be careful if you return too many of those shitty products, they will close your account, even if you have a Prime membership. Amazon is shady as fuck and an untrustworthy retailer. The way they treat employees is beyond atrocious. Amazon makes Walmart look ethical and honest in comparison.
I briefly shopped on Walmart.com because Amazon had marketized, destroying my trust in reviews, brands, and product quality, and Walmart had not. That time is past. Now I find myself sticking to manufacturer websites or buying things in the store again.
I truly dont understand the Amazon hate. I spent 8k from it last year (about 500 items) because I have a very intensive hobby and have virtually none of the issues people complain about. I got the wrong item once (not sure if it was fraud or a mishap in packaging) and Amazon refunded me and told me not to ship it back. Of the 500 items I bought I probably return 20% of them and have never had an issue with a refund.
Perhaps my needs are different than others but I personally find it truly amazing. The one time I tried ordering something off Wal-Mart it came three days late and returning it was a nightmare.
Yeah I've seen a lot of suspect merchandise sold by amazon too. Meaning just poor quality stuff with incredibly high star ratings. Wal mart they tend to go through major distributors. For now anyway.
Amazon doesn't come close to occupying "the bottom" so far as shopping experiences are concerned. To see that it's still doing relatively well, just try this: shop for five items on Amazon, and then shop for the same five items on Walmart. The Amazon experience remains much better—in many cases, it's superior. Listings are more relevant and better sorted on Amazon. At least, this is my consistent experience. I want Walmart to be a good competitor…but at the moment, I find that it's still not close.
Simple search strategies on Amazon help, too: to avoid counterfeit products, search for products that are sold by (and not just shipped by) Amazon itself. Don't attend to one- or five-star reviews; instead, read the two- and three-star reviews (if any at all) and consider the percentage of all verified reviews that give 1-3 stars. Of course, none of this is foolproof; you may still end up with a low-quality product. But I find that these strategies help a lot. I get >100 shipments from Amazon per year, and I have almost no problem with low-quality or counterfeit goods.
There was a time that I turned to buying from walmart.com as alternative to amazon, precisely because it wasn't taking the 3rd-party seller approach; but then they decided they had to imitate Amazon. Well, no thanks.
Anecdote time: I bought a “sold by Walmart” (on Walmart.com) product and what arrived was an Amazon return—with someone else’s return slip still in the package.
I complained and got some money back, except they credited the amount twice. When I contacted them about the double-credit, their system was down so they told me to contact them again later. Then later, they just told me to keep the money :/
What’s frustrating about avoiding Amazon is that every other big retailer is trying to be Amazon, so you have to deal with the same “marketplace” nonsense you wanted to get away from.
Buying clothing on Amazon is also hell. I suspect that some vendors deliberately mis-size their items. For the extreme majority of items around $20-30, I don't bother returning them.
If Amazon's purchasing experience was smoother, I'd be doing less paranoid research ahead of time, looking up the company, trying to figure out if the reviews are fake. If only Amazon could shape up how much buyer's disadvantage I'm experiencing on their store, I'd be buying more often and more confidently, especially from anything other than popularly reviewed items.
Amazon needs to shape up their game because, yes, ordering online is convenient, but you can shop online at Walmart AND get the offline return assurance. And most stores price match Amazon now.
Here's my list of things I won't buy on Amazon.com:
- Anything which goes in or on my body (foods, medicines, etc.).
- Anything which is easily knocked off (SD cards, memory, SSDs, etc.)
- Bed sheets (oddly enough, you'll often get lies on materials and fabric)
- Thing I need reliably / reliably on-time (I cancelled Prime after several shipping issues)
Since I cancelled Prime, things added to this list include:
- Most digital content (they added ads to music I paid for as soon as I cancelled Prime, and many newer Kindle books are hard to back up into non-DRMed formats)
Most of what I will buy on Amazon are generic gizmos, like kids toys, cables, generic keyboards, battery chargers, basic tools, and basic clothing (kids pyjamas and that sort of thing). However, it's no longer my first source. I'll go Aliexpress, eBay, and Walmart first.
I now have Walmart's equivalent of Prime instead. It's not great, but it's better. There is zero customer service, but shipping times are more accurate than Amazon, generally faster, and they'll actually let you know if something is running late or early (which is huge, if you're planning a project). Walmart's selection is worse than Amazons, but I'm hoping it will catch up. I also am starting to go to local stores again.
It's become a huge selling point for me that I can walk into a store and talk to a human about a problem I am having with a product. Lately, this has meant that the Walmart online store gets more of my business than Amazon for items that aren't available at brick-and-mortar stores in my area. Because Walmart will take back items bought at the store and resolve problems right then and there.
Amazon has started selling items that aren't returnable and I wish I could opt out of it. I got a laptop/phone bracket that was made with some crappy, brittle plastic, but Amazon didn't accept returns on that item. If Walmart sold ebooks, I don't think I'd use Amazon anymore. After dealing with expired food and medicine through Subscribe and Save, Amazon delivery just throwing things on the ground and damaging them, and unreturnable items like the phone accessory, I am done with them for physical items.
Getting through to Amazon customer service is a huge pain in the butt, especially now that the customer service flow is self-help -> text chat -> telephone chatbot -> foreign call center. With Walmart, I just drive a half block away, go to customer service, wait in line for five minutes, and boom, it's done. It's a breath of fresh air honestly.
Buyer beware - my wife hates Amazon and goes out of her way to not purchase from them. She has encountered several vendors on Walmart marketplace that simply place orders with Amazon at 100% markup - the packages arrive in Amazon boxes w/ a receipt showing the actual cost paid at Amazon. Total rip-off.
When ordering electronics from Walmart Marketplace, particularly TVs, I’ve found that the marketplace sellers freely substitute makes and models. Maybe nobody notices if you are shipping a gift to someone else, but since I need specific models from specific manufacturers for development it gets noticed when I order LG model XYZ and get a no-name tv instead. I stopped ordering from Walmart altogether after the second time (out of two, consecutive) that happened.
So my advice is anything you buy online at Walmart, make sure it is not a marketplace seller, just save yourself the trouble.
In all cases Wal-Mart refunded my money after waiting for a week for the vendor to respond, though I had to lug the stuff to the UPS store to return it. Amazon usually suggests I donate stuff rather then return it.
I’ve not had any issues with the items sold by Wal-mart actual, those you can buy with confidence.
For books, I always check bookfinder before ordering from Amazon.
But if you get a funky product on Amazon, I would think that returning it would be a fine way of registering disapproval. It can't be that good for Amazon, and you can bet they're noticing both the product and the vendor when it happens.
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