Between eBay and Amazon over the years I’ve done thousands of transactions, including probably 100 as a seller on eBay. The way people on HN talk about these companies, you’d think I would have been victim to endless amounts of fraud. In reality, both companies have handled the rare issues that came up just fine for me and the vast majority of transactions were perfectly fine.
The HN comment section version of Amazon is pure hyperbole at this point.
I’m aware that there are problems and some people haven’t been as lucky, but do you honestly believe you’re more likely to get a box of rocks than the product you ordered? Or that people will pay large fees to have average products verified before shipping when Amazon takes returns all the time? This is just silly.
Strongly disagree. I have always gotten refunds on Amazon when there were issues whereas on eBay I had sellers run away with my money when they knew that pursuing legal action would cost me more than the dispute amount and eBay doing nothing.
Amazon used to have the best prices, but that is no longer the case. Just a couple of weeks ago, I needed to get bulk cat food (for a bulky cat). I tried Amazon, but they wanted double what I would pay at chewy. So I got it from chewy, and will never look at Amazon for that kind of thing again.
I also tend to go directly to manufacturer Web sites, and order from there. The price is seldom much higher than Amazon, and I won’t have to worry that I’m getting a fake, or gray market junk.
Also, grey market products aren't junk - they are by definition the official product just without the price gouging the manufacturer does in locales where they can get away with it.
Overall I have a higher level of trust in Ebay purchases than Amazon purchases.
I'm curious, since I never get these (90% of the time I'm buying used anyways). Do you know what genre has this the worst?
I don't buy a lot of books though so maybe that's where a lot of this is coming from?
Amazon was built on trust. I bought a book from them in the early days. It didn’t arrive after 2 weeks and they said ‘we believe you’ and they shipped me the book again at no charge. A week later i got 2 books, the first was lost in transit. Contacted amazon and they and no problem keep both and give one to a friend. I and many others were loyal to amazon after these experiences, paying more due to the lack of hassle and high trust. They became the default online bookstore thanks to this trust. It wasn’t even worth price comparisons, you looked on amazon and bought it there knowing you’d get the product you paid for.
That’s now gone. They have fallen to ebay levels of trust at this point. You’re likely to be shipped a box of rocks rather than what you wanted at this point.
People are willing to pay more for trust and the lack of hassle it represents. I want to buy a hard cover book that’s well printed. If i keep getting poor photocopies on tissue paper the trust is gone. I'll happy pay more to buy from a site where that never happens. I won’t even bother with price shopping when one site is a good chance of a scam and the other isn’t. In fact i’m pretty sure that’s where amazons dominance as the default online store came from and i’m shocked at how little care they have for this fact.