Why I hate buying on Amazon

RFW

xxxxxxxx said:

Items on Amazon are more expensive than ebay.

No they aren't. Sometimes they may be.
I sell on Amazon, some of my products are sold on Ebay. When they are they are purchased from me on Amazon so are substantially more expensive. This is not an uncommon practice.

forgotmyname

Sometimes Amazon is cheaper and sometimes ebay is cheaper and quite often buying
elsewhere is cheaper.

I really hate the Amazon Search, Its terrible for me.... Worse than ebays, maybe not quite as bad as B&Q
but its getting there.

Searches seem biased against lowest price first.

Coveredinbees!!!!

I hate it when you don't realize the seller is in china and delivery will be in 3 months time.

theoretica

Getting round amazon search

1) google search as mentioned eg for "2000802731" site:amazon.co.uk

2) restrict your category eg DIY & Tools > Building Supplies > Heating & Cooling > Boilers & Accessories > Circuit Boards   (I generally find it by first finding any boiler circuit board and looking at the category it is in)

MalMonroe

Coveredinbees!!!! said:

I hate it when you don't realize the seller is in china and delivery will be in 3 months time.

There is always an estimated delivery time against every item you buy on amazon. If you don't realise delivery times, you haven't checked against the listing. 

MalMonroe

You don't have to buy from amazon and the owner of amazon Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world. Estimated worth this year : 175.3 billion USD.

Either shop with him or don't. He's doing fine.

Coveredinbees!!!!

Which is fine when you know that but the first time you do it without realizing is annoying, you should be able to turn off non uk sellers like you can on ebay, not that it works 100% on ebay anyway.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

MalMonroe said:

Coveredinbees!!!! said:

I hate it when you don't realize the seller is in china and delivery will be in 3 months time.

There is always an estimated delivery time against every item you buy on amazon. If you don't realise delivery times, you haven't checked against the listing. 

There may well be but there isn't much (anything?) to indicate where the item location is. Generally seeing a long delivery date indicates the item isn't in the UK but it would be nice if this was clearer. eBay is actually miles a head in terms of providing item location, dispatch time and type of courier used for a more informed decision.

I often find eBay is cheaper for third party items and Amazon for new, branded products (drop shippers aside which eBay have finally done a little something about by demoting them in the search results).

One tying that annoys me about Amazon is some product pages offer different pack sizes, usually of products that don't come in "packs" and so is just the seller saving by sending more together (which makes sense) so you click on 2, 3, 4 and 5 to find out the £5 product is 4 times the price as a bigger "pack".

It also annoys me that Amazon send 18kg bags of dog food via Hermes with no packaging which on 3 occasions so far this year have been "damaged" before delivery, Amazon then labelled it as a return but didn't refund unless contacted as the courier didn't return the damaged item to them, which wouldn't be as bad if you could still send them an email.

Last time I lost £8 on a save 25% voucher off the first order, Amazon then make out they are doing you a favour by giving a £10 voucher which they didn't credit and required contacting again to actually get it. 

They recently sent some chain (thick chain for the garden, not jewellery) in a card mailer that slipped out, it was perfectly smooth and flat so I can't see it travelled far before falling out. 

They also have a habit of sending fragile items in wrap around mailers which get damaged but then you order something else that could survive a steam roller and get a massive box with loads of padding.

And why oh why when things come in a box with paper as padding do the packers put the product in a corner of the box rather than the middle? 

My love affair with Amazon has lost it's spark over the last couple of years and I now find myself buying more from eBay and independent websites with less problems. 

elsien

You can't do much about idiot sellers though, wherever you buy from.
I bought a picture frame from ebay which came with perspex rather than the glass I had ordered. The seller replaced the perspex without quibbling which was good. Until I received what used to be a pane of glass and was now a multitude of smaller bits when they sent it in an envelope marked fragile but with minimal padding.

molerat

Agree with the awful search.  I have just searched for a particular brand item.  The search comes up with what Amazon think I should be searching for but they do have the tick box to narrow down to a particular brand. Unfortunately, although several of the branded items do appear in the search, that brand is not listed in the tick boxes.