In fact, I don’t think I really even have a product category blacklist anymore; it’s more of a whitelist. The only thing I will buy at Amazon are products that should be impossible to fake (beyond the industrial design), like an iOS device.

Reasons:

- Receiving broken, clearly used/returned, or counterfeit items.

- Product reviews obviously gamed and useless.

- Sticking their nose into political issues. Just run your services please and don't try to tell me what to read or think.

For a lot of other things, the price is so close or the exact same, I'll just buy it from the store. I do a lot of woodworking, so I buy a fair amount of stuff from a number of brands that people aren't really counterfeiting (yet)- for those I'll buy using prime, unless it's at one of the woodworking/hardware stores in the area. Then I'll just go get it myself, the prices are always within a small percentage of each other.

It feels like, for me, I do my window shopping at Amazon and execute my purchase locally, just because Amazon has gone downhill for me. I would be interested to know if other people are slowly coming to the behaviors I have.

Pretty much I get random small electronics components that don't need a great level of quality and just random other things that I don't care all that much about quality or origin. They've become my Alibaba in a way.

They seem to want it both ways. They have simultaneously tried to argue that they are not responsible for third-party sellers and blame them when fake and/or unsafe goods are sold, but then they work hard to make it appear that everything is coming from one place. It gets particularly annoying when it's a product with lots of variations (colours/sizes etc) where each variant will be a different seller with different shipping.

When there's something I want, I might research it on Amazon, then I go to the manufacturer's site and find an authorized reseller to buy it from.

Trying to buy quality items in certain popular categories (eg: screw driver set, chargers, flashlights, etc.) is all but impossible as you have to wade through pages and pages of low quality Chinese made knockoffs with weird brand names and of course, 1000+ 5-star reviews.

It's gotten to the point that my wife and I have been purchasing more and more items through Walmart, Target and Home Depot. They've all upped their game to compete against Amazon, and I'm happy to wait an extra day or two to receive an item in lieu of having a product that is likely better quality and the option for a frictionless return at a local store if needed.

As an ML engineer, it's clear to me that Amazon really hasn't cared about their reviews being gamed, or that their marketplace is now just a flea market being drowned in a sea of crap. Hopefully that changes going forward.

Amazon is no longer the first place I look for many items; with things like Shopify, high-quality eCom experiences are available to basically every business in a way they were not 10 years ago. For branded products, I’ve started buying direct from the brand websites with mostly good results. I’ll probably cancel Prime next year.

I avoid Amazon as much as possible now since it's no longer possible to rely on their reviews and there are way too many results to be able to find one that's not fake or of extremely poor quality.

I'm starting to appreciate going to brick-and-mortar shops again and having the choice between only a dozen of good quality products, instead of thousands cheap barely usable ones.

Have no idea how they are so dominant still when they seem to not care at all about these things.

- There are multiple products, sometimes dozens, which are actually the same product in the same or different colors, and often with a variety of nonsense manufactorer names. So there is the appearance of choice while actually the non-same items are difficult to find (needle in haystack)

- Products tend to be very low quality. If you take time to read the reviews, it's obvious that many of the high reviews are stuffed. The low score reviews usually tell the same story: a critical part breaks on first use, or a critical flaw renders the item completely unsuitable for the task it is intended for.

- Counterfeits... I don't even need to get into this, as it's a very well-known problem.

Unfortunately, the Walmart effect applies here too, because the low prices attract most shoppers, and the small players (and brick and mortar stores) can't compete and go out of business. If they try to compete, they typically just find the same garbage manufacturers who are selling on Amazon. It's a race to the bottom.

As consumers, we end up with items that are either useless on arrival (and not even worth returning), or they are far less than we would have hoped or wished for or been willing to pay for.

The great irony is, with the ability to import items from around the globe, and the significant number of online stores, it can still be impossible to find even a decent simple item (such as an extended reach car wash brush).

Even if you search more broadly than directly on Amazon, you see the same few items across most online retailers. And when you read reviews of the items on each retailer website, you see the same low score complaints... sometimes in such detail that you can be certain that it was the exact same product.

I see no solution to this. There is one country where most of this garbage comes from, but any special measures to penalize their exports will just result in shifting the manufacturing to another don't-care country which will pick up the slack.

Imagine the total cost of this situation, from materials consumption to trash piles (which is a short process for many of these products). It's an obscene waste.

/rant

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.

When I want commodity items that don't have a specific manufacturer (HDD enclosures, small tools, etc), I'll go to aliexpress because it's exactly the same things as sold on amazon but for a quarter of the price. I just have to wait 3 weeks longer than on amazon.

I don't even get books from Amazon anymore, because there are pirate prints of books.

It's all fun and games when it's just about having the item break after a couple of weeks because it was a low quality copy, but amazon also sells more dangerous things like Christmas lights with fake CE and UL markings or PPE that aren't sturdy enough to meet the norms they supposedly adhere to.

Not even mentioning the returned and used items sold as new for the full price, or the appalling way in which Amazon treats its workers.

It doesn't even make life that much more complicated, and thinking whether I want something so much as to go to the store or wait a month to get it from China is an excellent filter to block impulse purchases.