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> So knock-offs are a problem but you can actually avoid those

I do wish that was easier though. Sometimes I add 'but not crap from nonsense brand' to my search, hoping someone will notice.

Some ideas: verified list for the brands filter (often it's some bizarre subset anyway, and there are clearly genuine respected names missing?), search that respects literal quotes and not/-, price sort/filter that isn't comically wrong and that operates on Amazon price only or else includes shipping.

Ideally (I know Amazon would never do this, seller-hostile) just roll up all the duplicates into one, so the 'from' price is the cheapest seller from all sellers of the supposedly different products, and the results list is much cleaner.

I suppose an extension could fairly easily have some heuristics (all-caps 4-6 letter brand name) to hide these results. Sometimes I do want them, and then could just toggle the extension off. Is there anything like that?

> Amazon's logistics network has improved constantly.

So you can get crap delivered faster?

> The shopping experience is getting better, not worse.

My experience is exactly the opposite. Amazon is one of the worst online shopping experiences I've encountered. It wasn't always that way -- I happily shopped with them for almost two decades before I finally had to give them up.

I honestly can't think of a single advantage Amazon has over just ordering directly from the companies whose products I want to buy.

> I honestly can't think of a single advantage Amazon has over just ordering directly from the companies whose products I want to buy.

This is what I do when I can, and for the same reasons you described.

However, doing so has made the most significant difference between buying from Amazon compared to buying direct crystal clear: it's rare that Amazon can't get it to me overnight for a cheaper price than buying direct.

But, like you said, all that means is that they can ship me the wrong thing, or a counterfeit thing, or a lead-laden craptastic-thing, just as fast as the correct thing.

I look at it this way - while it takes longer to get here, and shipping is rarely free, it still saves me time and money in the long term to buy direct when I can. It also helps directly support the people I'm buying direct from, and that matters to me more than the time and money savings Amazon makes you think they provide.

> So you can get crap delivered faster?

I don't know what your personal tastes are, but personally I prefer buying good things. If instead you prefer to look for crap and order crap then why are you complaining you search for and ordered and bought crap?

I mean, you have a say in what things you pick for yourself, don't you? Why are you complaining you buy crap when you intended to buy crap?

It boggles the mind how some people try to pin on a store their personal responsibility of deciding what stuff they purchase.

The point is that on Amazon, it's incredibly easy to order crap without knowing it's crap. If I order something that I know is going to be crap (it's obviously so from the listing, or is too inexpensive, etc.), I'm doing that knowing what I'm getting. That's not what I'm talking about here.

In order to avoid getting junk from Amazon, you have to be extremely cautious and do a lot of extra work. If I have to do that anyway, there's no reason to use Amazon.

Some neighborhoods (where opinion-makers live) are getting fast shipping, for the rest of us Amazon seems to have the worst logistics network

https://www.rather-be-shopping.com/blog/amazon-no-longer-off...

In the same time frame every other retailer thinks they can win me over through service, AMZN increasingly thinks I will keep subscribing to Prime since I've subscribed to Prime since 2006.

As it is you'll hear Jim Cramer and David Brooks talk about how fast Amazon shipping is and you'll never see it be a joke on a sitcom that Amazon deliveries are late, but for the rest of us it is quicker to wait to the weekend and drive to the store. I wonder if my Congressman thinks I get shipping from AMZN as fast as he gets in D.C.

> Some neighborhoods (where opinion-makers live) are getting fast shipping, for the rest of us Amazon seems to have the worst logistics network

I'm not sure that's a reasonable take, and it reads like a gratuitous putdown.

Where you live matters, and an urban center next to a local distribution center will always have better service than a rural area where barely anyone lives. It is absurd to use areas with bad coverage to complain that the whole service is bad, specially when you add the regrettably conspiratorial excuse that only influencers get a reasonable service.

The truth of the matter, that even your comment with an axe to grind admits, is that Amazon does indeed provide fast shipping services in some areas. These areas are naturally urban centers where a lot of people live per square meter, which means large numbers of people in that area benefit from fast delivery services. It's like economies of scale apply. In some other regions with small markets and residual demand, Amazon even falls back to standard postal service. Is this supposed to mean that the company provides a poor service. Well, no.

The truth of the matter is that Amazon has been growing it's distribution network, and it shows in it's quality of service. Those of us who live in urban centers that benefitted from these investments are privileged to have access to overnight delivery and some times even same-day delivery. Others who might be stuck living in an area with poor coverage don't. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the service got worse.

Free shipping is a tax on people who live in densely populated areas, much like the more obvious tax such people pay to provide those living in sparsely populated areas USPS services.

If there’s anything Congress needs to look into, it should be the massive transfer of wealth from densely populated areas to sparsely populated ones thanks to “free” shipping.

I've lived in 3 cities recently. 2 day shipping every time for years.

"Amazon's logistics network has improved constantly. The shopping experience is getting better, not worse."

WHAT???? Prime no longer delivers in 2-3 days. The reviews are junk, the search words are gamed, the production information metadata is junk, the quality is terrible, the search results are all placed/gamed.

Things I have to do on Amazon's site that I didn't have to once upon a time:

1) immediately go to the second or third page of results to eliminate paid placement

2) immediately filter reviews by 4 star reviews to eliminate fake ads

3) cross-search the product on other sites to get a sense of legitimacy of the source

4) very carefully examine the photos of it and similar products from the company to gauge a sense of how legitimate their engineering is overall

It's exhausting. I only use Amazon for weirdo products now, but Walmart and NewEgg are steadily eating into their selection advantage. For any tech product I 100% prefer to order from NewEgg over Amazon, even if it is slower and slightly cheaper.

You know what Amazon is good for? Find the bare minimum engineering on products, and then try to find the slightly better engineered ones elsewhere for comparison. Amazon has the scrape-the-barrel quality, then you can see why the products at Walmart or Target are worth it or not.

Even then, I know they are a horrible company to their employees, predatory, arrogant, etc.

If anyone thinks Amazon represents some vanguard of good online retail, they are astroturfing or have no real historical basis of understanding.

Any logistics improvements of the last 5 years have been to expand their monopoly and "shareholder value". Delivery is worse now. Their abuse of delivery workers means you can't get a package reliably delivered in an urban area, they don't have time for delivery instructions.

"The missing chair is for the Customer". Yeah uh no.

It's not unusual at all to find something on the shelves of Target for $40 that Amazon wants $70 for.

> So knock-offs are a problem but you can actually avoid those,

How? They commingle inventory, and there might not be a perceivable difference based on appearance, so who knows if the internals or quality of materials is the same until it fails?

> How?

Stick with official stores from reputable brands. Don't order shit from sellers like GoldenRandomBrand24723. Don't buy shit from shady stores with 10 reviews. Don't buy shit from stores whose pricing model is based on charging high shipping fees and low prices. Don't buy shit you can't return.

Basically, don't do deals where you know upfront the odds you'll be screwed without any recourse is high.

Online stores sell products, but you need to get your head sorted out and do the thinking.

Amazon makes it harder and harder to do this, de-emphasising the seller in listings. I used to be able to confidently "buy it now" from the search results page but I'd never do that now.

The fact that the answer is "look through all the reviews to see if they're shady, check the seller, check the sellers reviews" is an absolute product failure by Amazon. I shouldn't have to do scam research to buy a toothbrush.

> Amazon makes it harder and harder to do this, de-emphasising the seller in listings.

You make me suspect I might be using Amazon wrong. Amazon's search is notoriously bad, but if you know what you want them you can go there and buy it. Just don't do stupid things like buying a 20 dollar item whose cost is 1 dollar price with a 19 dollar shipping fee, or buying weird things from shady sellers who just dropped by out of nowhere.

But that's just me. Perhaps I'm using it wrong. Who knows.

An example, just because this is exactly what happened to me recently. Looking for Oral B replacement toothbrush heads. A bunch of bargain off brand alternatives pop up, yeah, I'm skipping right over them for something going inside my mouth. The second non-sponsored result is:

"Genuine Original Oral-B Braun Precision Clean Replacement Rechargeable Toothbrush Heads..."

$31 for a ten pack. Seems probably about right? But when I click through the full title is:

"Genuine Original Oral-B Braun Precision Clean Replacement Rechargeable Toothbrush Heads (10 Count) - International Version, German Packaging"

and it's sold by "Wiki Deals". The photos show a package with English labelling, for what it's worth. So I guess these have been imported somehow? Are they legit? What does that mean for FDA approval, I wonder? I don't want to have to consider these things.

By contrast when I search Target, the first result (including any promoted stuff):

Oral-B Sensitive Gum Care Electric Toothbrush Replacement Brush Head

It's a three pack, $21, sold by Target themselves. More and more I'm just going to Target in the first instance and skipping Amazon entirely.

I have bought from official stores, only for Amazon to say my package is conveniently "Now arriving early" from a totally different seller.

That is not supposed to happen! You need to contact customer support, it's a bug.

What use is all that filtering if inventory is commingled?

That doesn't work when they comingle inventory. I got a counterfeit SanDisk microSD card from Amazon as the seller. They did refund obviously but it's still a hassle. Now I ironically only buy smaller brands that ONLY have themselves as seller and have had better luck getting real cards.

You say that like it's easy. It's not. It's a lot of effort. It's much easier to simply not use Amazon.