Does anyone else go looking on amazon because they used to have loads of stuff, but now there’s just a few things over and over and over and they’re not quite what you wanted. It’s so full of promoted content and you keep thinking that somewhere on one of the pages there might be something new, but no, it’s these same products again and again.
Amazon: You want to search for laptops with Graphics cards? Want to filter by RTX 3000s, 2000s, or 1600s?
Me: What about RTX 4000s?
Amazon: “What is a RTX 4000?”
I use google. All it does is shove products at you anymore, so you might as well take advantage of that and use the search function that works far better than Amazon’s. All the Amazon sold products will show up in the google search anyway. Unfortunately, google’s modifiers are essentially worthless (like if you put -“amazon.com” or whatever to avoid amazon items) so it’s pretty hard to filter stuff, but at least Google casts a wider net so you might find better products or deals. Amazon does not always have the better price.
If you see a particular item in the google search that is what you’re looking for you can plug that specific brand and item name in amazon’s search and see if they even carry it. Sometimes they don’t, but that will help skip past Amazon’s shitty algorithm that forces items they want you to buy like made-for-Amazon crap vs what might actually be a better product.
Order it right from the widget maker directly if you can and skip amazon.
Yeah it’s pretty trash, and I’ve found that if I buy direct from the manufacturer website for 99% of stuff I’ll actually save $5-10, including shipping
Also you have automatically been signed up and charged for Prime.
- So hard to avoid signing up for Prime.
- Even harder to cancel your free trial of Prime if you ever caved and took the free trial.
- I don’t know why they don’t do Prime for free all year. I always buy more when I’m on free trial Prime. It would be an easy way to get more of my cash. But I guess enshittifying executives are going to demand more customer charges, and maybe they get more money from paid Prime subscribers than they get from increased purchasing anyway.
It’s not just a matter of avoiding it, I have been signed up for prime on days I didn’t eve use Amazon. The system will sign you up on its own.
Get the same feelings with Netflix. Like it feels like I’m some experiment for them instead of a customer looking to watch movies.
Actually you may well be part of their “beta experience” which typically sucks ass.
Turn it off in your settings.
Like it kept trying to recommend Carry On after I gave it a thumbs down. That movie was fucking garbage I couldn’t get through the first like 20 minutes
I’ve never used Amazon in my entire life (well, I’ve probably visited websites hosted on AWS, but that’s it).
I see no reason to change that. Besides we have a pretty neat alternative in the Benelux in the form of bol.com. Loads cheaper & more local.
Yeah, amazon used to be cheaper than other places. Now if they are, it’s only by pennies. The enshitification process continues. Hope your Benelux place thrives on good service.
Amazon was never active in my neck of the woods, we had a local competitor. This was a bit shitty for a while, as it didn’t have the same reach Amazon had.
When Amazon finally rented the market it was ok for a while and then enshittification came in.
So we still use the competitor.
Northern Europeans doing it well as usual.
Well the competitor is owned by the largest supermarket chain and they try to follow amazons buns model, so it’s kinda shitty and capitalistic all the same.
But because it’s smaller in scale and doesn’t impact the silly chain that much it’s still mildly better (think Amazon right years ago.
But for the time being it’s slightly better. I think it’s great that Amazon has a competitor that didn’t lose out.
Yeah. Monopoly corporations are awful.
Amazon is deliberately built to be terrible for the users, so they can push products that make them the most money. Most filters are useless, and some don’t work properly, you only have limited sorting options that also don’t work properly (if you sort ascending by price, it will still put sponsored results that don’t respect the sorting order). A while ago, I was looking for a product that I knew should cost about €5, and I couldn’t find any cheaper than €10 until I got to the 10th result page.
For an example of a good search interface, just check farnell.com. It’s insanely good, you can basically filter by any attribute of a product. Being able to use something like this to search for a laptop, or a mobile phone would be amazing.
I clicked through to their browse all products page, and it was a thing of organised beauty.
I found that sometimes I need the right terms to find what I need. I’ll search several times in rapid succession to narrow down what I want.
I wanted an oversized hoodie for my wife that didn’t look like ass and didn’t choke her.
Started with oversized hoodie, oversized woman’s hoodie, oversized hoodie deep neck, finally oversized hoodie v neck was what I wanted. Then I scrolled a few pages to see the options.
It’s really bad though when looking for memory or storage. 1TB nvme? That works. 1TB SSD? Nope. 1TB SSD SATA mostly works, just have to make sure it’s ACTUALLY 1TB.
For computer stuff I just use newegg. The filters are great in most categories and once you find something you can search for that specific product on Amazon to compare prices.
I love trying to search for specific products. “Oh, I see you’re searching for a specific item from a specific name brand. Let me show you everything but that name brand. But first, let me show you stuff that also isn’t that item first. Enjoy.”
In the wake of worker strikes and Amazon’s continued enshittification, I have pledged to stop buying anything from them.
That’s a good idea. I should do the same. They’re really annoying anyway.
I’ve not used Amazon for purchases in around 5 years and my life is no worse.
I’ll often use it to find products and then buy them else where but as this post highlights it’s so annoying seeing the ads all the way and not just organic listing of products.
Where are you buying things that didn’t have ads or sponsored content?
I’m not sure what you mean?
I didn’t really understand what they meant either (until right now when I re-read it for the third to fifth time in a day and got it).
I just thought it was a typo in a sarcastic comment saying something like “Why wouldn’t you want things that were irritatingly sponsored?!”, so I thought it was a confusing post, and I still have no idea why people have been downvoting you for not understanding.
Anyway, now I get what they were trying to say.
They mean “If you find it on amazon but then buy it elsewhere, presumably the elsewhere has fewer of the problems with ads and sponsored content, and you can find a specific item quite easily. I’m skeptical that such a place exists, but I’d sure like to use it if it does. Where is this magical elsewhere of which you speak?”
Thanks for explaining what they might have meant as I was a little confused.
It depends on the product, but here is such a site for computer hardware Scan
Oh wow, is that the same scan from years ago? Back in the day they had a good reputation for being decently priced with decent customer service. For some reason I thought they folded.
Yes I believe it is. They had a couple shops here in Manchester. Now they have a large place in Horwich near the Bolton Wanderers stadium.
It’s my goto for all my computer supplies. Customers service is still great.
Ah superb. Well done them. I’ve been to the Reebok Stadium, but I don’t think it was this century!
My neighbour
They do it on purpose. Makes you stay longer, increasing chances of extra sales
So annoying.
Tbh, I find it a little more than mildly infuriating. Verging on very infuriating.
I found what I wanted on ebay, where the same item only appeared more than once if more than one seller was selling it. Amazon repeats the same stuff over and over and over and over.
Ebay sucks though too, they’ll steal your money. I will only use them as a last resort as well. I try to go directly to the manufacturer’s site to get around these big ones.
But also the dont want product you, the your product want dont, and the super dont want you product for (8 pack)
All of which are low on stock.
Member when Bezos wanted to solve product reviews to make their search work better? Some time ago, Amazon just gave up and surrendered to the hellscape it has become.
Someone wrote the code that puts the same listing four times per page.
The niche thing you just bought just two months ago and that no one would ever need two of in their life.
That one drives me up the wall. It happened to me recently, but on something a bit more mainstream - a spanner set. No, I don’t need another spanner set! Seriously, who buys more than one spanner set ever? Oh, and sometimes I search for an item, don’t buy it, but then I’m offered great deals on similar products every time I log in for the rest of time.
I looked at ONE light switch because I couldn’t find exactly the type in other stores (single-gang dual 2-way multipole) and now they will NOT stop emailing me about electrical equipment and supplies as if i was a contractor
Exactly. Amazon are the pushiest of the dodgy pushy salesperson.
I mean I bought one toilet seat, clearly I need 16 more, they know us so well
My weirdest Amazon experience was when I went to Lowe’s and bought a drill bit and a pair of cabinet door hinges, and just looked at cabinet pulls for a minute or two - didn’t buy any or even pick any up. That night, Amazon recommended for me drill bits, cabinet door hinges … and cabinet pulls. I’m assuming that I got linked to in-store footage from Lowe’s, which is creepy but certainly not suprising.
Is Lowe’s like a physical amazon store?
They’re not in any way associated with Amazon, as far as I know. But apparently they sell their customer data to them - and immediately.
Your phone’s Wi-Fi told them exactly where in the store you were. That’s how they knew what you were looking at.
