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Comment by ketzo | Hacker News Reader

That’s funny, my trust profile is exactly the opposite — I’ll use Amazon in a heartbeat for kitty litter, but if I’m ordering a camera lens/PC part/nicer clothing, I’m ordering from the manufacturer/a specialty site.

I think for me, the more everyday a purchase is, the less I care about if the purchase goes wrong in some small way?

I do see where you’re coming from, though - I’ve many times gone through the process of:

“I wonder if amazon has any <niche item>?”

...

“Oh, Amazon has literally dozens of different <niche item>s, cool”

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Same here. These days Amazon has been demoted as my store for everyday items I don't really care about. I enjoy the free next day delivery and the fact that I don't need to register at another shop, but for items I care about (in my case it's often bike gear, audio equipment, clothing, hardware) I will always prefer the countless shops specialized in that particular product category.

In Germany they're mostly just as quick to deliver and sane return policies are required by federal/european law. And most importantly their inventory is way better - organized, curated, categorized and genuine.

That's interesting. Do you generally not check if the item is sold by Amazon.com itself?

For me, I still prefer Amazon if it is a high value item, I check the seller though. I prefer to have my contact information/payment information stored by a company I can trust to keep it safe and in as few places as possible.

I've stopped using Amazon because almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself. I've been forced to use Amazon gift cards but I immediately told my friend afterwards that I spent 15% more than if I had bought it from an online retailer with a better reputation than Amazon.

> almost nothing is sold directly by Amazon itself

What do you base that statement on? I order lots of stuff from Amazon and almost all of it is sold by Amazon and not a third-party. Sometimes I do have to pick Amazon from the list of alternate sellers.

I got my Nikon 200-500mm tele lens off Amazon, and it was sold by Amazon. It was also, by its serial number, a gray-market item manufactured for the Chinese market, and not covered by warranty when sold in the US. But you can't find that out until you have it in your hands.

It worked perfectly as I got it, and the model had been on the market past the early peak of the bathtub curve, so I kept it. Still works perfectly today, too. But it taught me a valuable lesson about how far Amazon can be trusted on high-ticket items.

These days the only camera gear I get from Amazon is trivial niche stuff like eyepiece diopters that aren't worth anyone's trouble to gray-market or counterfeit. For everything else, there's my local camera store, or B&H or Adorama.

There's certainly a profile of relatively high end, readily faked, mass-market products that I would never buy on Amazon. Apple iPhone chargers are the classic example, but most name-brand fashion qualifies too.

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