Comment by cgriswald
7 years ago
Amazon is busy shooting itself in the foot. The problem is, the gun is small and the foot is huge, so they probably don't feel it right now.
Supplements (or really anything I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore. That probably doesn't result in much loss for Amazon right now, but what it does do is:
1. Makes me trust Amazon MUCH less, which means I'm much more likely to forgo purchasing additional classes of items from them.
2. Makes me find new online or offline vendors for the classes of items I no longer buy from Amazon. Those vendors sometimes sell other items I would normally buy from Amazon as well. If I need those items, I'm not going to shop BOTH places. I'm going with the one I trust.
3. Makes me reconsider my Prime membership. (Among other things, like shipping having become less reliable recently.)
There's a tipping point here somewhere, where I'll just stop being an Amazon customer entirely.
Normally I'd just upvote and continue on my way but with the expectation that maybe someone from Amazon is reading and thinking "surely not everyone feels that way".
We all feel this way. Inventory co-mingling will have major long term costs. If you think about it, it is pretty crazy how big of a reputation hit Amazon has taken in the last few years.
I didn’t used to fee this way. Or rather, I kind of did, but didn’t really /care/.
Then I had a kid, and the question of “do I trust this thing to go into or onto my kid’s body?” actually mattered.
Suddenly, my purchases from amazon drop like a rock. Partly for classes of item I don’t trust getting from them, and partly because I’m just getting habituated to shopping at different outlets.
Moreover, this has become a “known thing” in the online mommy groups in our area. My wife has told me she’s heard exactly the same thing on her fb and mailing lists; increasingly, “don’t buy amazon” is a given for conscientious parents.
I’m spending a lot of money on this tiny human, Amazon, and none of it is going to you.
Likewise. I'm at a point where I just do not trust Amazon. I also pretty much only buy with Amazon as the seller, which in some cases is annoying because they seem to change to another seller a lot of the time. Only because if Amazon is the seller, returns are usually easier.
Even the Basics brand is just about worthless as far as anything technology/electrical as the quality is usually lower than the value on the price.
The irony is I'm finding the Prime Video selection more valuable than the shipping/buying experience lately.
> We all feel this way.
Absolutely. I order direct from the manufacturer for most of my supplements these days and the rest I pick up from Target and CostCo. I used to buy all of them from Amazon.
Opposing view: If comingling means faster delivery then I'm all for it, just take care of counterfeiting separately.
Ditto
Same here
I canceled my Prime ages ago, and have pretty much entirely stopped ordering from Amazon. It's impossible to navigate their storefront to find the legit items, and then you hear stories like these where even the legit items are fraudulent. I just can't be bothered. Mostly I buy locally these days, or buy direct from book publishers and electronics manufacturers (or even more often, simply not buy). I've switched to using eBay for one-off items that are hard to find locally. eBay's system was designed from the beginning to make fraud easier to detect.
WRT Prime specifically, it's kind of a self-feeding problem. As Amazon's reputation tanks, you stop buying things, which makes Prime's value also tank.
Consciously or not, I've noticed that I too no longer trust Amazon to deliver on sensitive goods due to commingling:'
* I don't buy foodstuff or supplements from Amazon
* I don't buy things at high risk of exploding (batteries that weren't manufactured by who I expected)
* I don't buy high-volume counterfeit products (vacuums, for example)
I would rather take the 30 minutes out of my day to drive to a store where I trust the supply chain.
The logistics system is about the only part of Wal-Mart's business that I respect. They know what side their bread is buttered on, and they can make sure it gets to the plate exactly when someone wants toast, using a minimum quantity of diesel fuel.
Unfortunately, their purchasing policy sort of ruins it. While I can be certain something is the brand that it says it is at Wal-Mart, I can't be certain that it isn't a Walmart-specific SKU or outlet-store SKU that is not the same quality as enticingly-similar SKUs sold by the same manufacturer.
It's not technically counterfeit for a brand to sell a product of inferior quality into completely separate discount retail supply chains. You should know what you're getting, too, as the prime retail supply chains and outlet retail supply chains don't mix in reputable companies, because they don't want the inferior goods to tarnish the reputation of the superior.
Amazon throws that out the window. The brand manufacturer cannot control Amazon's supply chain to a level required for protecting their brand. As long as commingling continues, it only makes sense for counterfeiters to sell via Amazon. It also makes sense for "para-feiters" to buy a real brand from an outlet store and swap the outlet SKU to the prime retail SKU for the most-similar product, and sell at a smaller discount to the prime retail price. Shoppers think they're buying the prime retail version, and they might get shipped the discount version from the para-feiter's commingled stock.
So it's not entirely on Amazon. The manufacturers were already burning down brands when Amazon threw fuel on the fire.
Note that if you have young children, the list of sensitive goods is basically everything considering they try to eat anything they get their hands on at one time or another.
Amazon Logistics is... special.
I regularly have packages “delivered”, but they mysteriously show up a day or two after the claimed delivery. I assume this is the logistics “contractors” missing their quota and making up for it later.
The contractors are out of their mind around me trying to hit quota. Last week an amazon van barreled in from the opposite lane, cut off traffic, and parked at a 45* angle facing traffic halfway into a street parking spot. The whole lane was blocked while they struggled to find their apartment on foot.
That would be UPS doing that, not Amazon.
I really did mean Amazon Logistics.
https://logistics.amazon.com/
As far as I can tell, this is Amazon coopting the gig economy for their own deliveries. The quality of service is predictable. I doubt the delivery people (sorry, Amazon Delivery Service Partner) make a heck of a lot of money.
No, there are defiantly people delivering stuff our of cars and cargo vans. I haven't had an amazon order come via UPS or FedEx in a while.
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> Supplements (or really anything I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore.
Same here. Also considering I've bought herbicides on Amazon, I always wonder how well edible and toxic items are warehoused, and how they handle the eventual spillage.
> 2. Makes me find new online or offline vendors for the classes of items I no longer buy from Amazon.
I'm about 3/4 on the way of replacing amazon with other online sources that are specialized in a domain. As a bonus, those sources usually know the domain well, offer a great selection and undercut Amazon on price. The only thing is that shipping can take longer… though some vendors are actually faster.
> Makes me reconsider my Prime membership.
I've already set mine to NOT auto-renew. It's buried behind several clicks but once it's out, I'll leave it out. The value I get is just no longer worth it.
Yeah I got a really bad vibe when I got the supplement stuff and then pushing some questionable quality things. Really quickly my impression of Amazon changed.
"Supplements (or really anything I put in my mouth) is one of a growing set of classes of items I won't buy on Amazon anymore."
How would you know that the vendors you are buying these items from aren't themselves buying from Amazon or other counterfeit vendors?
Honest question, because I'd really love for there to be some way for consumers to verify the authenticity of what they're buying, but as far as I know there isn't.
It's not about the fakes, it's about trust. I don't expect perfect fake detection from a vendor. I can't perfectly detect fakes myself. I expect vendors to develop trust with their own sources like I'm trying to develop it with the vendor. I expect fakes to be non-existent or rare-enough in their inventory and for them to respond appropriately in case a fake does make it through. An appropriate response is not just to coldly refund my money and continue to allow the item to be sold in their store. An appropriate response is to refund my money, be truly mortified, and at the very least stop selling the item; if not stop doing business entirely with whichever distributor or seller sold them the item. (Also, my time is valuable; so I'd expect some recompense for the inconvenience which could act as a proxy for 'truly mortified' since I can't actually know their internal state.)
I often buy from Target or Costco.com, which have no 3rd party sellers that I'm aware of. Because of this, I assume that they are vetting their vendors and supply chain to minimize the reputation damage that counterfeits would cause. I also use Walmart.com, but I filter out anything sold by 3rd parties to make sure I'm buying something from Walmart's vetted supply chain.
If shipping charges aren't prohibitive, I'll also consider buying directly from the manufacturer website.
If you buy from a random site on the internet that doesn't have a reputation to protect, then I agree it's just as risky as buying from Amazon or a random eBay seller.
Likewise, I've been looking at Walmart.com more often as well, but even there they seem to have other sellers. I'm unsure if their actual supply chain is any better or not though. Amazon really ruined it.
Aside: I'm also disappointed in Newegg at whatever point they started allowing third parties. Worse still is a number of the third parties list the same products as different items/codes so search is a pain sometimes until you select newegg as the seller.