alt Hacker NewsMaybe the novelty of Amazon has worn off. I occasionally purchase from their UK site, and it’s filled with tricks to get me to sign up for Prime upon checkout. Really horrible workflow and design decisions, cheapening the experience. I now see similar changes to the US version: ‘you saved $15 in shipping by being a Prime member with this purchase’ and ‘last year you made 211 sustainable product purchases’.
Guys, quit being so desperate. Concentrate on quality items at competitive pricing and fast delivery. Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.
My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine and one bad day away from going in the trash. Next time you do a wave of layoffs, please include everyone involved in these horrible decisions.
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Amazon has been quite useful for me as a single bachelor living in an Indian metropolitan city.
1. I get very useful items at very good prices, many of which I would have to wander the city for hours to find, or couldnt find at all: - Eg: I got a pair of adjustable dumbbells at <2K INR. Some of you would call it a cheap knock. But it has been super useful and I would have not bought it if it cost 8k INR. I brought a whole bosch repair toolkit at good price and it has been invaluable for fixing electric/plumbing etc.. issues. I got a high volume travel bag - I didn't even know 40L travel bags existed and wouldnt have brought one if not for amazon. I could go on.
2. Amazon Fresh is usually cheaper for groceries and maintain consistent quality compared to local supermarkets. I will also avoid the need to walk long with the grocery bag.
3. Electronics are significantly cheaper on amazon and again the need to search.
Maybe all of this can be even better as you said. But bottom line is that their operations look pretty efficient to me. Their catalogue is pretty much unmatched. (They may be losing money on retail business - but that's not my position to care as a customer. As other commenter pointed out, it may not even matter much for stock price.)
> My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine
I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures. It would need to be self-contained and local, so that the infrastructure burden (e.g., data and AI in the cloud) wouldn't create a need for subscription service or data collection revenue to cover the cost.
Home Assistant and other open-source projects seem like they may be the only way that we get consumer-friendly devices.
https://github.blog/open-source/maintainers/the-local-first-...
> Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.
They are the TJ Maxx of software development.
I personally haven’t expected anything more of them for years. Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made and all that.
Amazon has become a marketplace for cheap sometimes harmful chinese knockoffs. Amazon doesn't even check what is being sold. I only order directly from places I trust. http://nbcnews.com/business/recall/cheap-chinese-faucets-dan...
These just aren't the relevant concerns behind Amazon's stock performance in the last month. It's the capex.
Amazon has become AliExpress at this point, so I just skip the middleman half the time
I still like to buy my cheap and esoteric Chinese stuff from Amazon. It's a good balance of not-too-slow-delivery and not-too-expensive for very specific stuff. And it's easy to return if it doesn't work.
Example last purchase: An optical SPDIF to 3.5 mm DAC box (5V/USB-powered) to put behind the TV with a broken/very low quality audio output. It was about $15 including 25% VAT. Probably like $5 on Aliexpress, but I didn't want to wait 6-8 weeks.
Never really buy anything costing more than $50 from them though.
I have two Alexas but never get ads.
How is it that you’re getting ads?
They're an ads company now. Not a store. Not a device vendor.
I mean if I want two day/fast shipping, it's still the only place that can do it without costing me $45, and even then a lot of places won't get it in the mail that fast. They also have a much more reliable and robust return policy, which is a headache for other sites. While I agree the experience has worsened it's still the best online store as far as I'm aware
My peak number of orders p.a was in 2023: 215 orders
In 2025 it was 27 orders
I expect it to be even lower this year. I didn't even buy my eero router upgrade from Amazon.
I largely attribute this to poor quality products, horrible search interface, trying to sort through the dropship spam, and prices no longer being as competitive.
Amazon used to have decent-quality "amazon native" brands like Anker, Eufy, Eero etc. but there are better alternatives to buying all of these products now