eBay is very good for science-related goods, in my experience. Last week, I bought ~$12K of used gear for a project. All items work, would have cost ~2.5x that from the usual used instrument vendors, about 6x new.

EBay is the worst website someone can use for shopping…they just got it all wrong. Seems lead by people who don’t use it

Ebay is no less shady. Buy something(from China) that takes a long time to arrive, reviewing is disabled. Ebay is junk.

I have ordered items on eBay just for the seller to order it on Amazon and send it to me that way. Just happened to me this week with club bells/Indian clubs.

AliExpress is less shady. If only they had customer service and a decent UI.

This has pushed me to high levels of brand loyalty with direct ordering from the brands I like and trust, plus a lot of buying used… also mostly products from a handful of trusted brands (this is largely clothes, nearly all of which I buy used except socks, underwear, and most sweaters)

It depends on the brand, but a lot of the stuff I buy is available directly from the manufacturer's site, usually via Shop Pay.

Don't allow 3rd party sellers?

"We're not competitor obsessed, we're customer obsessed. We start with the customer and work backwards." - Jeff Bezos

Backwards indeed.

Of course not. They _created_ this problem.

Its been "day 2" at Amazon for a long time now. I guess the Leadership Principles need an update.

That's a problem for you — the customer - not for Jeff, the VP.

In 2022 I got physical mail about leaving a review for something I bought from Amazon (sold by company X, shipped by Amazon) in exchange for Amazon Gift Card. It contained the name of the product I bought. When I tried to report it to Amazon:

* there was no obvious way to do it. Closest thing was by reporting issue on product.

* there was no way to show the customer service agent a picture of the mail. Chat did not support sending pictures & they were unable to open imgur link.

* agent recommended me to leave a report it by leaving review to the seller page. I did that and next day review was deleted.

So it's pretty clear that Amazon didn't care and I doubt it has changed (unless the law you are talking about is recent one).

The article says that they did do this.

10 years ago I was working on this problem at Amazon. We were developing methods to normalize all the crap listings and methods 3ᴿᴰ party sellers used to get unique listings when consolidating them was known to drive down prices, which was the original goal.

I had some interesting insights (vendors want to be unique, but need to keep products visible in search, so they typically use a common transformation within their own listings to satisfy both properties), but left before implementation rolled out. Based on current search results, either they failed or the project was abandoned.

I’m shocked at how some categories just contain junk from random brands with unpronounceable names. Want a music player by Sony or even RCA? Those brands have left that market completely for B2B products or are a licensed name on top of some garbage. Now you can get a Zaqe, Picxiul, Lwyinp, Globluum, or Swofy!

google.com "KEYWORD reddit". It's been the only way for me for the last several years, but mostly for inexpensive items (20-100 USD). In the States it's more frictionless to do Amazon returns then through Temu or AliX.

I do my best to find a local or online shop that actually knows & understands what they sell. Getting harder, but for more expensive items definitely achievable.

AI chat interface works where search does not. Not perfect, but much better, and allows more specific, accurate filtering.

It's not common that they miss those timed delivery windows, in my experience... but when they do their systems don't seem to be able to handle it well and the delay is far worse than it would have been if it _weren't_ a timed window. I suspect it's related to the timed deliveries mostly being farmed out to gig drivers.

OMG yes this. So annoying.

It’s like Uber saying book and pay for a ride, cars are 2 min away. Great here’s my money, send a car. 15 min later still waiting for car…

I think Amazon is catching on. I had this happen last week, and after the 2 days late, Amazon sent an automated apology with the option to cancel if it didn't show up after the third day.

sounds like fraud to me

1999 or maybe 2000 for me. Dollars are votes for how I want to see the world.

That costs a lot of effort, time and money, all of which are in short supply nowadays.

> The civil court system exists for a reason. Start using it.

Yeah, if you are a private customer that might work out going to small claims court against a large company.

But if you are a commercial vendor? Tough luck, you probably signed some mandatory arbitration clause in your terms, maybe even a non-disparagement clause. Whoops. Arbitration can cost shitloads of money upfront or expose you to the risk of having to pay the counterparty's lawyers if you lose the arbitration, no referral to the regular court system possible. And even going to the press to complain is a risky move.

There's a lot of things I'd be willing to jump into. But I'd never ever want to be in a commercial relationship with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta or any of the other tech giants (or Walmart, they are just as infamous for squeezing suppliers), simply because they have all the cards and I have none. They decide to kick me out, my existence is gone.

Thanks! We've switched to that from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-24/inside-th... above.

Gods work, thank you!