My wife searched and searched for something made in America. Finally found something, ordered it and when it came, said "made in China, assembled in the USA". Not happy.
Yep. When asked, a lot of them will say they ship from Texas. This is because they ship their product to Mexico, use NAFTA to get their product into the US (Texas) and ship from there.
And just like the OP stated, the shipping times stink. Why am I still paying for the Prime membership? Ok, shipping is free, but most shipping on Amazon is free anyway. Everything we order with Prime is taking a week or more.
I hate to be "that guy" but... a couple years ago I was trying to start a business making customizable refrigerator magnet calendars, and I did tons of research on how to get my production off the ground. Unfortunately, Chinese manufacturers were literally 1/20 the cost of American manufacturers for what I needed... and when a company doesn't actually even have a product yet, or is very new, it is simply impossible to choose American.
Sure, we can expect companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google to manufacture in the US; but it simply isn't feasible for small-time entrepreneurs, which make up the majority of vendors on Amazon.
In my case, my product would have been pretty much the same. Made in China, assembled in the USA.
I don't personally know how our country can even go about fixing such a problem. The barrier to entry for non-service businesses is already unfathomably high. Cutting out third world garbage countries who are willing to enslave their own workforce makes it worse lol. Automation might lower US manufacturing costs, but it also puts an exponential amount of people out of work. What's the answer? Learning to code?
'Designed in the USA' all big and prominant. Tiny text below further down 'made in china'. All the usual legal workarounds. The like fast spoken disclaimers at the end if commercials saying everything you just heard was bullshit.
Lower income American entrepreneurs don't really have much of a choice. A Wisconsin stay-at-home mom designing cheap silver jewelry can't make the product herself... she can either have a Chinese company make them for $2 a piece, or an American manufacturer make them for $8 a piece. Either way, nobody will pay more than $5 for them.
Do you suggest she just suck a dick and not have a business? Americans have, unfortunately, endured decades of complacency from exploiting China and the third-world, that we expect to pay less for most products than they are worth.
I've basically quit using them since they started using covid as an excuse to skirt their shipping promise to me as a prime member. Won't be renewing because if it either.
I literally just canceled prime. I wasn't using it a whole lot anyway. But I recently ordered a few items and it took almost two weeks to get delivered. To me prime had no value anymore at that point. Buh-bye
Just so you know, you can cancel and ask them for a refund for some (or the whole) portion of the membership cost. I got the whole thing refunded, albeit mine was only recently renewed. They tried giving me less than the whole membership cost refunded saying that I had already used some of the benefits, to which I said that the whole reason I'm canceling is because I hadn't been getting my thing in two days (so no benefit derived). They gave me the whole thing back.
Lockpicking lawyer, a youtuber who reviews various locks, even reviewed one where the company pays people for leaving a positive 5 star review, violating the TOS of amazon, but there is no report feature on amazon or they just don't care.
There are companies selling counterfeit branded items (Chinese knockoffs) on Amazon as well, and they don't seem to care.
One of the craziest Amazon experiences I've experienced was when my sister ordered some hot sauce that she wanted me to try and had it delivered to my house when she was visiting me. When the package arrived it was empty; a sealed padded shipping envelope with nothing inside. She was able to call and get a refund, but I never did get to try the hot sauce.
I love that guy. I got into lockpicking after watching his channel, but I got my stuff through a US site that sells quality merch. All of Amazon's crap is made by Chyna and the "good" reviews for nearly everything on Amazon are suspect.
Bezos was given the washington post. In exchange he got an under-cost deal with the US Postal Service. So he has a "monopoly" of sorts, but the tax payer is paying for it.
Trump knows this and is gunning to disrupt the corrupt USPS and Amazonwashingtonpost. But as he has been for 3 years, he's delayed some by evil corrupt fucks with russiarussiacoronoatrumpiskillingpeopleukrainevotebymail
The USPS loses a taxpayer subsidized dollar and change every time the richest person on earth sells a product, but it's a partisan issue to correct that. And he double dips and charges $120 a year for that privilege.
only reason I use amazon is if it's something I cant find in local stores or I dont care how long it takes to get to me. otherwise I'd rather see the item in person and take it home that day than wait days for it and have the package lost or bounce from one town to another for a week before finally coming to me
Likewise. I try every other avenue I can before I use Amazon anymore. We used to use it quite bit, but now that we're serious about No China in our purchasing it's become harder to track who the manufacturers are and Amazon does us no favors there.
^^^ This. I have been trying my hardest to buy local and buy American, but sometimes they make it so hard, it's almost like they don't want your business.
Some of those mom and pop stores are still stuck on The Yellow Pages and just don't understand the power of on-line shopping. The website needs to be current and have itemized inventory. I go to Lowes because I get the military discount. Everything in the store is inventoried on-line down to the tiniest clip or bolt so I know before driving a few miles to the store, they have what I want. I know a well-designed website can be expensive, but there's no arguing with the results it can have.
The Lowes by me is way different. online inventory doesn't accurately reflect the store. Many items are out of stock (bolts, etc) and it is hit or miss when they restock. I suspect that being a smaller area, it is where they send their loser managers...
I search ed the web inventory for a motorcycle and the local company did not have it. Three weeks later on the way home from work, for giggles and kicks I stopped in, and the bike I wanted was sold a few days earlier The dealer said, yeah we never keep that site up to date. Sad.
It hasn’t been better for a long time now. Even most other online retailers are better than amazon. Try an experiment, go to both amazon and monoprice and add the same cable to your cart on both. The cable on monoprice, including shipping, will be the same price as amazon. Amazons “free” shipping is just baking in the cost of shipping into the product, while most everywhere else only makes you pay for shipping once per order.
It's true. I still use it a lot but when it takes 10 days to ship half their items Amazon doesn't seem so great. The only reason I'm keeping prime is I'm currently getting it cheap because I signed up with a student email. Plus I have the amazon credit card that gives 5% discount on amazon with prime. Finally, I watch Prime Video sometimes, although it's mostly boring low budget documentaries and original content I don't care about.
Same here, and I also live in a rural area where local retail options are few. I've been buying a lot more stuff on eBay lately though because it's often cheaper than Amazon.
Definitely. It used to be that Amazon consistently had lower prices, but that is no longer the case. You can usually find things cheaper by buying new from merchants on eBay these days.
For a lot of things, you can get great deals on eBay for used or "open box" items. When I was moving, I got a case of 12 "used" heavy duty large archive boxes for more than $100 off the usual price of $160+ (some sellers showing over $200!). Turned out to be totally new and unused, just open-box.
Not to mention a lot of sellers pass off a lot of B-class product on amazon. Typically these are inferior products not typically sold in American markets.
Especially if you buy electronics, always look for a UL listing stamped on it.
The goverment needs to start taking action on fake reviews. Its plain and simple fraud. Often a company or individual will get "review bombed" and if amazon likes them, they will erased or stop reviews from being posted. But they never do this for positive review bombs, they never filter out positive reviews even when they are clearly fake reviews.
That is frustrating. Looking at reviews of a product that has multiple models and they're combined with older, outdated models all because those prior models have a high review rating. Very deceptive practice.
You should run your Amazon purchases through both Amazon Smile, for donation to Judicial Watch, and run the reviews through ReviewMeta.com to check for accuracy.
I use their extension for Chrome personally.
Anything under $10 needs to be cross checked on eBay though as you can often wait for a couple days and cut the price in half. I just use the vendors with the most prior sales on a particular item on eBay as, IMO, you can't trust much on the platform.
If they don't do direct orders, find a locally owned shop who you think should carry it, tell them how often you would be buying it and ask them to get it in stock.
The delivery people are terrible too, our delivery person at our condo complex leaves all the packages downstairs together by our mailboxes where it is accessible to anyone walking around.
Walmart.com online is also really good, though the search function is more like Amazon than eBay. They have a ton of different companies selling there, and for "sold by Walmart" items (about 1000 times more selection than in their biggest stores), you can get free ship-to-store on almost everything. For orders over a certain amount, shipping to home is free.
I’ve had 3 packages not show up the past month, the tracking # says it’s delivered but that’s not true and all my other packages came. I’d rather jump off a bridge then call and have to speak to those Indians though.
If I wanted to sell cheap products I would avoid China at all cost. I'd rather have my products made in India, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, etc. At this point involving China in your business is aiding and abetting the enemy. Do not do it.
If you put your US made product on there and it becomes popular, they will copy it, have an Amazon version made in Chyna at a fraction of the price and kill your business.
I kinda like Amazon. I live in a pretty small town and we have celiacs in the family (gluten free). It's pretty hard to find gluten free stuff here so, I use amazon a lot! I understand that Jeff Bezos own WaPo and, we don't like that fake-news rag but... I do like Amazon, especially because everytime I order from there, a donation is make to Judicial Watch. I also enjoy Amazon Prime Video. I think Amazon Video has surpassed Netflix for me.
We just got exercise equipment with an Amazon gift card and and despite it being simple, it's screwed up. We're managing with it as is because we don't want to deal with return shipping 2 more times.
Need an executive order mandating the country of manufacture be listed front and center, and preferably as a search filter.
I agree. There should be a search filter Made in USA. A lot of what is sold on Amazon is cheap Chinese crap.
~ How to build an Amazon.
Accurate.
My wife searched and searched for something made in America. Finally found something, ordered it and when it came, said "made in China, assembled in the USA". Not happy.
Yep. When asked, a lot of them will say they ship from Texas. This is because they ship their product to Mexico, use NAFTA to get their product into the US (Texas) and ship from there.
And just like the OP stated, the shipping times stink. Why am I still paying for the Prime membership? Ok, shipping is free, but most shipping on Amazon is free anyway. Everything we order with Prime is taking a week or more.
I hate to be "that guy" but... a couple years ago I was trying to start a business making customizable refrigerator magnet calendars, and I did tons of research on how to get my production off the ground. Unfortunately, Chinese manufacturers were literally 1/20 the cost of American manufacturers for what I needed... and when a company doesn't actually even have a product yet, or is very new, it is simply impossible to choose American.
Sure, we can expect companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google to manufacture in the US; but it simply isn't feasible for small-time entrepreneurs, which make up the majority of vendors on Amazon.
In my case, my product would have been pretty much the same. Made in China, assembled in the USA.
I don't personally know how our country can even go about fixing such a problem. The barrier to entry for non-service businesses is already unfathomably high. Cutting out third world garbage countries who are willing to enslave their own workforce makes it worse lol. Automation might lower US manufacturing costs, but it also puts an exponential amount of people out of work. What's the answer? Learning to code?
This would be awesome.
'Designed in the USA' all big and prominant. Tiny text below further down 'made in china'. All the usual legal workarounds. The like fast spoken disclaimers at the end if commercials saying everything you just heard was bullshit.
Lower income American entrepreneurs don't really have much of a choice. A Wisconsin stay-at-home mom designing cheap silver jewelry can't make the product herself... she can either have a Chinese company make them for $2 a piece, or an American manufacturer make them for $8 a piece. Either way, nobody will pay more than $5 for them. Do you suggest she just suck a dick and not have a business? Americans have, unfortunately, endured decades of complacency from exploiting China and the third-world, that we expect to pay less for most products than they are worth.
I've basically quit using them since they started using covid as an excuse to skirt their shipping promise to me as a prime member. Won't be renewing because if it either.
I just cancelled prime
I use Amazon as a search site. Then go directly to the manufactures/distributors website.
Most of the time I do not have to pay tax & much of the time the product is in stock and cheaper.
I literally just canceled prime. I wasn't using it a whole lot anyway. But I recently ordered a few items and it took almost two weeks to get delivered. To me prime had no value anymore at that point. Buh-bye
Just so you know, you can cancel and ask them for a refund for some (or the whole) portion of the membership cost. I got the whole thing refunded, albeit mine was only recently renewed. They tried giving me less than the whole membership cost refunded saying that I had already used some of the benefits, to which I said that the whole reason I'm canceling is because I hadn't been getting my thing in two days (so no benefit derived). They gave me the whole thing back.
Lockpicking lawyer, a youtuber who reviews various locks, even reviewed one where the company pays people for leaving a positive 5 star review, violating the TOS of amazon, but there is no report feature on amazon or they just don't care.
There are companies selling counterfeit branded items (Chinese knockoffs) on Amazon as well, and they don't seem to care.
One of the craziest Amazon experiences I've experienced was when my sister ordered some hot sauce that she wanted me to try and had it delivered to my house when she was visiting me. When the package arrived it was empty; a sealed padded shipping envelope with nothing inside. She was able to call and get a refund, but I never did get to try the hot sauce.
I love that guy. I got into lockpicking after watching his channel, but I got my stuff through a US site that sells quality merch. All of Amazon's crap is made by Chyna and the "good" reviews for nearly everything on Amazon are suspect.
Bezos loves the swamp.
Don’t feed him.
Bezos was given the washington post. In exchange he got an under-cost deal with the US Postal Service. So he has a "monopoly" of sorts, but the tax payer is paying for it.
Trump knows this and is gunning to disrupt the corrupt USPS and Amazonwashingtonpost. But as he has been for 3 years, he's delayed some by evil corrupt fucks with russiarussiacoronoatrumpiskillingpeopleukrainevotebymail
The USPS loses a taxpayer subsidized dollar and change every time the richest person on earth sells a product, but it's a partisan issue to correct that. And he double dips and charges $120 a year for that privilege.
only reason I use amazon is if it's something I cant find in local stores or I dont care how long it takes to get to me. otherwise I'd rather see the item in person and take it home that day than wait days for it and have the package lost or bounce from one town to another for a week before finally coming to me
Likewise. I try every other avenue I can before I use Amazon anymore. We used to use it quite bit, but now that we're serious about No China in our purchasing it's become harder to track who the manufacturers are and Amazon does us no favors there.
That's the major issue with Amazon imo, everything is made in China. So hard to find products not made there.
If I order from Amazon, it takes ten days to come from one state over, when they promise two days.
If I order ammo, it takes three days to come from one state over, when they promise ten days.
It looks to me like Amazon is stuck on "New Normal". Too bad for them, we're going back to normal.
^^^ This. I have been trying my hardest to buy local and buy American, but sometimes they make it so hard, it's almost like they don't want your business.
Some of those mom and pop stores are still stuck on The Yellow Pages and just don't understand the power of on-line shopping. The website needs to be current and have itemized inventory. I go to Lowes because I get the military discount. Everything in the store is inventoried on-line down to the tiniest clip or bolt so I know before driving a few miles to the store, they have what I want. I know a well-designed website can be expensive, but there's no arguing with the results it can have.
The Lowes by me is way different. online inventory doesn't accurately reflect the store. Many items are out of stock (bolts, etc) and it is hit or miss when they restock. I suspect that being a smaller area, it is where they send their loser managers...
I search ed the web inventory for a motorcycle and the local company did not have it. Three weeks later on the way home from work, for giggles and kicks I stopped in, and the bike I wanted was sold a few days earlier The dealer said, yeah we never keep that site up to date. Sad.
I still have a couple of items pending from an order I placed in early April. WTF Amazon.
Slickdeals is pretty good at finding deals. Email alerts on something you're looking for w/ them kinda sucks because they come in too late.
It hasn’t been better for a long time now. Even most other online retailers are better than amazon. Try an experiment, go to both amazon and monoprice and add the same cable to your cart on both. The cable on monoprice, including shipping, will be the same price as amazon. Amazons “free” shipping is just baking in the cost of shipping into the product, while most everywhere else only makes you pay for shipping once per order.
It's true. I still use it a lot but when it takes 10 days to ship half their items Amazon doesn't seem so great. The only reason I'm keeping prime is I'm currently getting it cheap because I signed up with a student email. Plus I have the amazon credit card that gives 5% discount on amazon with prime. Finally, I watch Prime Video sometimes, although it's mostly boring low budget documentaries and original content I don't care about.
Same here, and I also live in a rural area where local retail options are few. I've been buying a lot more stuff on eBay lately though because it's often cheaper than Amazon.
Yep. Always check price.
Definitely. It used to be that Amazon consistently had lower prices, but that is no longer the case. You can usually find things cheaper by buying new from merchants on eBay these days.
For a lot of things, you can get great deals on eBay for used or "open box" items. When I was moving, I got a case of 12 "used" heavy duty large archive boxes for more than $100 off the usual price of $160+ (some sellers showing over $200!). Turned out to be totally new and unused, just open-box.
Not to mention a lot of sellers pass off a lot of B-class product on amazon. Typically these are inferior products not typically sold in American markets.
Especially if you buy electronics, always look for a UL listing stamped on it.
Amazon is pretty much unusable. Fake everything. Piss poor search function. Ads everywhere. They can go fuck themselves with a jackhammer.
The goverment needs to start taking action on fake reviews. Its plain and simple fraud. Often a company or individual will get "review bombed" and if amazon likes them, they will erased or stop reviews from being posted. But they never do this for positive review bombs, they never filter out positive reviews even when they are clearly fake reviews.
And they also combine reviews for lots of different products so it's hard to tell whether it's valid.
Their reviews used to be very helpful in making decisions, now they are worthless.
That is frustrating. Looking at reviews of a product that has multiple models and they're combined with older, outdated models all because those prior models have a high review rating. Very deceptive practice.
Hell yeah, it's fraud, costumers get fake information.
You should run your Amazon purchases through both Amazon Smile, for donation to Judicial Watch, and run the reviews through ReviewMeta.com to check for accuracy.
I use their extension for Chrome personally.
Anything under $10 needs to be cross checked on eBay though as you can often wait for a couple days and cut the price in half. I just use the vendors with the most prior sales on a particular item on eBay as, IMO, you can't trust much on the platform.
Find the product you want.
Find the manufacturer or distrubutors website.
Order directly.
If they don't do direct orders, find a locally owned shop who you think should carry it, tell them how often you would be buying it and ask them to get it in stock.
A lot of them pass off distribution to Amazon.
Use eBay. Better prices overall, and MUCH better search functions, so you can actually find what you want and find the cheapest total price.
I have never bought anything from or through Amazon. And I intend that I never will.
It's not hard at all
The delivery people are terrible too, our delivery person at our condo complex leaves all the packages downstairs together by our mailboxes where it is accessible to anyone walking around.
So lazy, noone else does that.
Yeah with their ridiculously delayed shipping, what's even the point?
Walmart.com online is also really good, though the search function is more like Amazon than eBay. They have a ton of different companies selling there, and for "sold by Walmart" items (about 1000 times more selection than in their biggest stores), you can get free ship-to-store on almost everything. For orders over a certain amount, shipping to home is free.
I'm old enough to remember when almost all the stuff at Walmart was Made in USA, and proudly displayed as such.
I used to use Amazon a lot. I walked away, life stayed the same but now with less Chyna.
I haven't used Amazon in over a decade. It's a terrible company. Glad to see them destroying their business.
And 90% of the results are drop shipped chinese trash or bootlegs
I’ve had 3 packages not show up the past month, the tracking # says it’s delivered but that’s not true and all my other packages came. I’d rather jump off a bridge then call and have to speak to those Indians though.
I'm proud to say, last night I canceled my Amazon Prime account, and I told them why. Also told them to go fuck themselves.
Yep.
If I wanted to sell cheap products I would avoid China at all cost. I'd rather have my products made in India, Mexico, Philippines, Taiwan, etc. At this point involving China in your business is aiding and abetting the enemy. Do not do it.
All you find on Amazon is cheap Chinese shit.
If you put your US made product on there and it becomes popular, they will copy it, have an Amazon version made in Chyna at a fraction of the price and kill your business.
Bezos even looks like Dr. Evil
I kinda like Amazon. I live in a pretty small town and we have celiacs in the family (gluten free). It's pretty hard to find gluten free stuff here so, I use amazon a lot! I understand that Jeff Bezos own WaPo and, we don't like that fake-news rag but... I do like Amazon, especially because everytime I order from there, a donation is make to Judicial Watch. I also enjoy Amazon Prime Video. I think Amazon Video has surpassed Netflix for me.
And I don't have to wear a mask.
We just got exercise equipment with an Amazon gift card and and despite it being simple, it's screwed up. We're managing with it as is because we don't want to deal with return shipping 2 more times.
Also, has anyone else gotten opened packages?