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Comment by kennend3 | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is on a gradual decline and what is shocking is that people dont see it.

I stopped using amazon around 2 years ago. If i want to buy "Chinesium" i use aliexpress and save a lot of middlemen in return for a long shipping time.

I've been burned by fake products a few times and learned my lesson long ago. Sure, amazon does make it easy to return them, but going to a real store avoids it all-together.

If you shop around for prices, it is rare that amazon's prices are even competitive vs an actual physical store these days.

this makes little sense, the store has employees and high rents, what are amazon's reasons?

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Amazon seem to pivot into a cloud giant with e-commerce as side biz.

AWS is their biggest profit center, so it makes sense.

That just excuses their poor behavior on their own marketplace. Where they're making untold amounts of money. No, just like Comcast's customer support isn't worth spending more of Comcast's money on, so, too Amazon doesn't have the incentives to improve on the status quo. and why shouldn't they? they're making money hand over fist

> Sure, amazon does make it easy to return them, but going to a real store avoids it all-together.

Genuine question, what store is this that:

1) has inventory in store of items like this

2) doesn’t also ever have fake merchandise on their shelves

The problem isn’t just Amazon, Walmart, or other large online retailers, it’s issues throughout the supply chain because of the lack of enforcement by all actors (retailers, distributors, shippers, manufacturers, customs agents, government agencies, etc).

Target.

> Target

So I’m not finding the news article at the moment on counterfeit electronics goods re: Target, but there’s been a couple I remember.

here’s one on makeup that I found searching though:

https://www.allure.com/story/counterfeit-beauty-products

The article cites Target Australia. My understanding is that because Target doesn't allow 3rd-party sellers like Amazon or Walmart, they have much better control over their supply chains.

MicroCenter is a good place to get 1TB USB drives, if you have one close to you.

Fry's used to be good for that sort of thing on the West coast too, but they're long dead.

I miss the days when Fry’s was good… :(

There are a LOT of old-school computer shops which trade on their reputation.

I'm Canadian so "Canada computers" comes to mind. They are almost always price-competitive with Amazon, and you can check their stock online before you go (they do ship as well)

They have been around for a long time and built a reputation of not selling crap. You can go there and know that what you buy will be a decent product. Maybe not as wide a selection as "amazon" but they carry the top of almost any category.

Newegg has been great for at least a decade as well?

The fake stuff isn't amazon or walmart, it is almost always "third party sellers" which many stores dont offer for obvious reasons (reputation damaging fraud).

I can't even get deals on books there anymore. The last three purchases I made were from eBay and gasp Barnes and Noble

> I've been burned by fake products a few times and learned my lesson long ago. Sure, amazon does make it easy to return them, but going to a real store avoids it all-together.

What makes you trust a brick and mortar store's supply chain more than an online store? There are counterfeit items everywhere.

i guess i am bias from my personal experience:

Number of fake/counterfeit items i have gotten from a bricks and morter store : 0

Number of fake/counterfeit items i have gotten off amazon prior to giving up on it : 6

Dig into this counterfeit items issue more deeply, it is almost always "third party sellers" and amazon's commingling that is causing these problems. Don't allow third party sellers, don't commingle your inventory and it is a LOT harder to introduce counterfeit items into your stock.

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