Technology

Yep.

If I can wait = AliExpress.

If I can’t wait=Amazon next day, then return when the AliExpress one arrives.

Depends who you buy from. I've had shipping take 2-3 weeks on some items since the sellers are just the same Chinese companies as Ali.

Amazon has essentially become a drop shipping front for AliExpress. You're getting the exact same terrible, knockoff products, just marked up and stored in an Amazon warehouse so you get it in two days instead of two weeks. They're both shitty, but at least with AliExpress you aren't paying extra for the middleman to make a profit.

if I'm buying anything on AliExpress it's usually various electronic parts and some tools. it's really good for that kind of thing, way more of that than on UK Amazon and half the price. doesn't help that I live in Ireland so occasionally you find something on UK Amazon that doesn't ship to Ireland. the downside of AliExpress is that it takes a month for whatever you buy to arrive and the website is a mess

Wish is an AliExpress copycat.

Amazon is a marketplace, anyone can create a store and put up items. It’s not really Amazon’s fault that people have BS listings. It’s not reasonable to human-vet every listing. Maybe they could have a better reporting system; idk.

I'll push back on this part. They can vet just fine by raising the barrier to entry a bit. They'd have fewer products. There'd be three USB cable vendors instead of 500. That would be OK.

Leaning into Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") can be OK in some circumstances. Leave all the gates wide open and let anyone in. Steam is a good example; I find most of my games by word of mouth, and if some shithole asset flipper wants to toss their game up there, I will probably never see it until Steph Sterling points it out.

I don't think that can work for Amazon. It's too much and fraud is rampant.

My big issue with amazon these days is that it's flooded with trash. Like sure if you want some disposable garbage that you dont think twice about or if a very specific item you know is good is for sale on their site you can use them and their return policy is good.

But otherwise the flood of no-name vendors has become like browsing a more expensive wish.com. So many randomly generated non reputable companies selling the same rebranded knockoffs of knockoffs at various price points. It used to be that at least you could go up in price bracket and get to the actual products but now even that is hard. You can check out products worth over a hundred dollars and it still have mixed reviews and no actual brand recognition . It's gotten to the point that if its something that matters or is more that $50 I search on big box sites and either order directly for them or find the item and get it off amazon.

Yeah once I stopped buying from Amazon I realised how many of my supposed needs were just wants. Like, it's ok if I can't get literal brass tacks for a project this week. It's not urgent. Nothing ever was. I didn't need any of this shit in the 90s and I don't need it now. I just got used to having it, and had to adjust to intentionally going without it (for ethical reasons).

It's true though I've had orders where I bought a multimeter, soap, Szechuan pepper, and a bamboo shelf for the bath. That's at least three stores and more likely four.

It's the only advantage they have left, here in Germany Amazon has become worse and worse and worse with shipping. Unless the online store is set up in the boondonks or you live there next-day delivery is the norm, and pretty much all other shops dispatch packages on the same day as long as you order early enough, Amazon often takes days to dispatch, and if I want to use my close-by Hermes pickup they take weeks because apparently they don't like how much Hermes is charging them. And no I won't be paying for fucking prime to get a service level you get everywhere else as standard.

AliExpress, meanwhile, I mean it's hit and miss but if you're ordering something from out of a EU warehouse it arrives reasonably quickly, usually the next day after. If you're ordering directly from China all bets are off right now: The northern rail links via Russia are down, so is pretty much the red sea, what's left is the Horn of Africa or the TRACECA rail link. Also doing import yourself can be a bureaucratic nightmare possibly involving first figuring out where your local customs office is (it usually won't be local at all) if they retained the package.

They're rising in popularity in the Netherlands despite having the same delivery as any other website, things are usually just cheaper or more available on Amazon.