I know I'm an N of 1 but speaking purely as a customer Amazon has been nothing but awesome. And I know that's probably seen by many as maybe selfish and wrong, and I get that argument totally. But I can the stuff I want* pretty darn fast and pretty darn cheap and if it's not what I want it's easy to send back. I understand that might be short sighted with all the drawbacks, but I still keep ordering. The pluses outweigh the minuses. Am I being selfish?
* Not the stuff I need, but the stuff I want. I think that's an important point.I guess I go to Wegmans for the stuff I need.
They used to be pretty consumer-centric a decade ago, but personally I pretty much stopped buying on Amazon in the last couple of years.
Having to inspect the items for counterfeits, dealing with support if the item isn't functional (or slightly defective), getting messages from sellers to "make sure to write us a 5 star review", eventual consistency on the shopping cart price (eg. if the price of an item increases between adding it to the cart and checking out, there's no big red warning like "hey this item is 30% more expensive than when you put it in your cart three minutes ago, are you sure you want to check out at this new price"), awful delivery experiences, it's just not worth the hassle anymore IMO.
wow. Am I glad to be in a country that bans most of these tactics by regulation. I have two weeks to send back items, no questions asked. Price isn't allowed to change negatively between when I decide to put it in my basket and buy it.
and I have never had an email asking for a positive review.
Another single data point here, this time from the UK.
On the rare occasions where I have a problem, Amazon are great to deal with - no quibbling about returns, no "30 days before refunds" (a lot of companies do this...), and they make it easy.
I know I'm an N of 1 but speaking purely as a customer Amazon has been nothing but awesome. And I know that's probably seen by many as maybe selfish and wrong, and I get that argument totally. But I can the stuff I want* pretty darn fast and pretty darn cheap and if it's not what I want it's easy to send back. I understand that might be short sighted with all the drawbacks, but I still keep ordering. The pluses outweigh the minuses. Am I being selfish?
* Not the stuff I need, but the stuff I want. I think that's an important point.I guess I go to Wegmans for the stuff I need.