I only purchase items that have prime shipping, and that have free returns in case something is wrong. 99% of the time their delivery estimation is accurate, usually within 48 hours of my order or less. If something is broken or I simply don't like it, I return it for free at any one of several places within a 10 minute drive of my house: Whole foods, ups store, or Kohl's. And there's no rush - I have a full month to return the items and the refund is issued before I even get back home after dropping off the item.

Out of the thousands of items I've bought through Amazon, I think maybe one set of Henckels steak knives might be counterfeit (I've ordered two sets of the same knives and they were noticeably different - both seem high quality though).

1) Co-mingle the inventory of multiple sellers in their distribution centers, so even if you buy from a good vendor you've used in the past, you still might end up with garbage from a shady vendor. 2) Allow widespread and rampant review manipulation / botting across every product category on the site, making it even more difficult to distinguish 'dodgy vendors' from so-called good ones. 3) Allow vendors to BRIBE customers with things like free items or amazon credits for 'organic' reviews, again, making it a Sisyphean task for most customers to find reputable vendors.

> and then they idiotically blame Amazon

This a callous and inane assertion. If a customer buys something from Amazon's website, and pays Amazon, and Amazon emails them a receipt, and Amazon delivers the product, the customer has every right to blame Amazon if the product they receive is crap. I'm frankly flabbergasted that you somehow think it is the fault of the customer.

> 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.

This reads like ad copy to me -- Amazon basic products are fine, but they certainly are not 'best in class' or 'very high quality'. Amazon doesn't even go that far (they items are literally called 'Basics'.). Furthermore, if the only thing a customer can feel confident purchasing on Amazon is a Amazon Basic items, it kind of defeats the point, doesn't it? There are not Amazon Basics versions for most product categories on the site, and the allure of Amazon is that you can get anything you want from one vendor, delivered quickly (A to Z).

(Not to mention, I've seen a lot of cases where Amazon Basic items are clones/knock offs of well-reviewed, high volume products designed and manufactured by third party companies. Amazon then copies these products and promotes its own listings, which isn't exactly the most ethical practice IMO)

…for the consumer’s benefit. It’s a win/win.

They are one our best companies. From the climate change perspective alone, think of how much better off we are, as a planet, thanks to Amazon. People are appallingly ungrateful. And the criticism is typically something along the lines that he allows too much freedom (“they let anyone sell stuff, even chinese vendors gasp) or oddly, they complain about logistical efficiency (“eww commingling! I would never!” as they clutch their pearls), when it’s acthually exactly what other retailers do. If people were so worried about their packets commingling we wouldn’t have the internet, the us postal service would stop functioning if mail didn’t get commingled. Commingling is good, progressive.

By that you mean overpriced dropshipping from aliexpress.

Edit: Also from manufacturers' websites.

The parts that aren't amazing is getting items that aren't representative of what I ordered. But refunding is always a breeze when that occurs.

My problem is that it shouldn't be a thing that happens so often (to me). I shouldn't be shipped shoes of the wrong size 3 times before I get shoes of the size I ordered. I shouldn't be buying open box items without being told it's open box. I shouldn't be buying things with the completely wrong thing in them.

Now, all of these can be problems with big box retailers. But the sheer frequency it happens to me on Amazon - it's never happened at this frequency to anyone I know when we would shop in store. Yes, my friend once bought a graphics card at Fry's that just contained a box of rocks. But that was one friend, one time. I've had more of these issues on Amazon, the last ~7 years, than I have for all shopping experiences everywhere else that I've ever shopped combined.

This is my exact experience in Canada so far. But they did something else weird. I wanted to buy Google Store gift card from Amazon and as soon as I made the purchase my account was suspended. It had taken me few hours including lengthy phone call to sort things out. I was told that gift cards are widely used in fraud. Sure, whatever but then why FFS they sell those?

I've also reported businesses who sneak 'give us a 5 star review and we'll give you $30' cards into their parcels and amazon did absolutely nothing.

Amazon is amazing until you realize it isn't. I got rid of prime and suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk because I wasn't incentivized to get junk by the prime membership. If I have to wait to have enough stuff for free shipping minimums I can wait enough to look locally and 1/2 the time I can find it locally for similar cost and the other 1/2 it turns out I never needed it just wanted it.

Highly recommend getting rid of prime and taking a couple months off ordering anything from them - you'll find out not only is amazon not worth it, they're easily replaced.

It is free for what I order.

>"suddenly I found myself spending less money on junk"

I do not buy "junk" just what I really need (mostly for business), so do not have this problem. I buy some things locally as well but it is not my goal to favor either.

>"Highly recommend getting rid of prime"

I am very service averse person and am trying to use as little as possible. My phone for example does not even have data plan. If I do use some however (Amazon in this case) it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

I thought that too until suddenly it wasn't.

>it means I need it as it saves me money / time whatever.

Only you know your balance book I guess

I strongly prefer bol.com. No idea if they ship abroad, though.

There are a lot of fishy listings, but it's also often quite easy to detect those fishy offers, because the German text is usually full of grammar and spelling errors, and often obviously a result from Google translate, and often not even fully translated, with larger parts still in (shoddy) English. Outright counterfeit products seem to be somewhat rare still, at least from what I observed, but there is quite a number of low quality knockoffs.

Or e.g. multiple journalists reported on review-rigging operations - usually organized through whatsapp, and using regular folks for a few bucks as "mules", to get some coveted "verified buyer" reviews. Or bait-and-switch listings, where they had an original listing which gathered some good/ok reviews, and then they repurpose that listing for another product, while keeping their stars.

Or e.g. there was a report about one guy who got like 10 - 20 packets a day with junk he never ordered, every day, over months. Apparently some shady sellers got hold of his info, and were using him as a "garbage bin" for excess stock[0]. While he wasn't charged for any of the products or shipping, he still ended up in a situation where his door bell rang a few times a day, and he ended up throwing away most of the stuff, having to properly dispose of it. And when contacted, amazon just told him to throw away the stuff he doesn't want. It's unlikely he was the only involuntary garbage bin victim.

[0] It wasn't clear why they did that. Maybe to inflate sales numbers to get higher ranked in the amazon search? Or because just shipping it through amazon to some random people might be cheaper than just keeping that stuff in the amazon warehouse or disposing of it properly?

I'm also quite skeptical of most positive reviews, because it's a known problem in Germany too. I don't think most people are aware of that though and still believe high ratings still mean anything.