On Thursday, 27 March we discussed why shopping on Amazon seems worse than it used to be. It has certainly changed over the years, sometimes not for the better. Here are some comments on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonprime/comments/1aqz3kg/why_is_amazon_so_bad_now_what_happened/ and Hacker News : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38972365 Complaints range from bad delivery, poor quality products to ads and algorithms showing you everything except the thing you are looking for.
However, it is still the biggest online general shopping store in the US. https://www.junglescout.com/resources/articles/amazon-statistics-2024/
This article notes that: “A majority of the products sold on Amazon are sold by independent sellers“ and that “68% of Amazon sellers are third-party (3P) sellers, which means they sell on Amazon’s platform and use Seller Central. First-party (1P) sellers are vendors who sell directly to Amazon and utilize Vendor Central.” First party sellers sell to Amazon, which sells on to the customer, while third party sellers sell directly to the customer through Amazon’s platform.
Chris told a shaggy dog story about a purchase from a Chinese third-party seller which was a complete shambles (though she received the goods OK in the end!) There are indeed some weird looking third-party sellers (at least on paper). However, when shopping through Amazon you have a layer of protection, one of which is that payment is through Amazon which holds your credit card and account details. These are not shared with the seller. You can also set up 2 step verification and passkeys to prevent unauthorised access to your account.
Delivery can be to a house or business address, or more conveniently to Amazon Lockers which are like banks of postboxes, and are usually available 24/7 (there are 5 in Xàbia) or Amazon counters which are frequently courier postal service centres. However some goods can only be delivered to an address, depending upon their size and specifications made by the seller.
You can use your Amazon account in many countries in the world where Amazon has a presence. This is useful if you have relatives in the UK or Australia for example, since you can buy goods on their national website and have them delivered locally.
A Prime account entitles you to “fast and free shipping, access to streaming services like Prime Video and Amazon Music, and benefits like Prime Reading and Prime Gaming, plus exclusive deals and early access to sales” (Quote from Google AI). However, you have to pay extra to get content ad free, and a Prime account is only valid for the country in which it is registered. i.e. If you subscribed to Amazon Prime in Spain, you don’t get the prime benefits when shopping on the UK site. Fees vary from country to country. Currently in Spain : Amazon Prime Membership fees are:
EUR 4,99 per month
EUR 49,90 per year
We discussed returns which are easily done through local Tabac shops using a barcode, and mentioned job lot palettes of bulk liquidations and returns which are available at knock down prices (but there’s no guarantee that the goods work!)
On the whole, members seemed to be happy to continue shopping on Amazon – despite the Ads, algorithms vigorously trying to sell you stuff you don’t need, questions of quality and dodgy third party sellers.
For more see : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)
Chris Betterton-Jones – Knowledge Junkie