Amazon: The same 31 products you don't want, again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again

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.

What annoys me about Amazon search is it doesn’t listen to my search, and it doesn’t allow qualifiers such as minus sign. Most other searches listen to minus sign as excluding that word from search.

Example: metal cup -plastic -mug -jug

I search for a metal cup, but I do not want plastic, and not a mug or jug.

In Germany, and by extension the EU, we have a website called "geizhals", which basically translates to "penny-pincher".

It is an insanly good tool to find the specific item you're looking for and where to buy it for the least amount of money. Its got a pretty robust search, and some of the most comprehensive filters I've ever seen. When I cant find what I'm looking for using Amazons search, which is nearly always, I use their site instead.

Only real downside (for me) is when stuff isn't listed on there. They probably collect data and stuff, but they also provide a useful service in return.

While writing this I have also noticed that they offer the same thing called "skintflint" for the UK. Maybe something similar exists for ppl. in the U.S. ?

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

I boycot Amazon because that company is fucking evil.

The product you actually want:

• Out of Stock -

• Doesn't qualify for Prime Shipping -

• Doesn't have the best Shipping/Price options -

• Unavailable -

• "We do not know when this item will be restocked!" -

Amazon search was never good, but it was not a problem before it got flooded with cheap Chinese crap.

The cheap Chinese crap makes Amazon worse, which results in loss of customers, which frightens the Shareholders (line has to go up), to increase the profit the management milks their cash cow (AKA cheap Chinese crap sellers) so more Chinese crap is in the site. The circle of life.

Amazon is just speedy AliExpress. Sellers use all kinds of key words so they pop up in the search, and they'll use different words for the same drop-shipped item that a dozen other sellers have. The sizes are all different because they're from varying shops and countries, quality is always questionable, and some are just scams (shout out to that 2tb hardrive I got a few years back that was just coded to read that when plugged in). You can't trust the reviews, as they're likely bought, bots, or both.

Looking for a product is low key exhausting, especially if it's important. You have to check videos, reviews, reddit, lemmy, Twitter, so you can get a variety of responses since the first 5 are alway "wow, my life has been changed by the DooDoo dome 1500.“

Unless you bought something, then you get the exact item in your ads too. Because hey, we know you liked that book! Why don't you want another copy of it, uh?

can't say I've experienced this exactly but I feel ya in spirit o7

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.

God forbid you want to use search exclusion.

Oh, you searched for “some item -plastic”, guess that means you want all these bestselling plastic ones.

The niche thing you just bought just two months ago and that no one would ever need two of in their life.

Amazon Canada is just a bunch of no name brand Chinese shit.

the hilarious part is that there is genuinely good Chinese products in 2024 but it's almost like Amazon wants to flood their store with over priced junk instead

I've custom tailored my Amazon experience using my adblocker to delete pretty much any element that doesn't serve me.

This includes any and all ads, "recommended" items, "customers also bought..." listings, banners for their business account, and anything that isn't specifically relevant to the item I'm looking at.

I can't image using it vanilla. They'd lose my business.

Also you have automatically been signed up and charged for Prime.

Check out this screenshot from Home Depot's website.

About 1/8 of the page is the product. Almost NONE of the page is the "specifications" section, which is the most important section.

The majority of the page is "frequently bought together", "More from this brand", and "Customers also viewed".

I have NEVER bought anything from any of these useless lists. But they have slowed down the page sufficiently that I stopped using their website and went elsewhere. Try browsing with just 10 product pages open on this site -- you will start having tabs unload or crash due to memory consumption. Some of these product lists have a dozen items in them if you scroll right, so it consumes gigabytes of RAM.

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?"

Get the same feelings with Netflix. Like it feels like I'm some experiment for them instead of a customer looking to watch movies.

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.

Haha, I thought this was a comment on AWS at first. Where everything service is just EC2s and S3 buckets in a trench coat that all do something slightly different than another service they offer.

In the wake of worker strikes and Amazon’s continued enshittification, I have pledged to stop buying anything from them.

kNN was a precursor to AI and is just as much slop.

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.

They do it on purpose. Makes you stay longer, increasing chances of extra sales

Your first mistake is giving Amazon money.

we need anti-enshitification extensions and apps for amazon and ebay, the former is even worse

i first shopped on amazon way back when it was still mostly books. they were just starting to bring in other stuff.

their web site and ui has always been shit.

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.

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.

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.

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.