Ask HN: Anyone else quickly losing confidence in Amazon?
Losing confidence? No, I lost that years ago. For quite some time the vast majority of the listings have been drop-shipped AliExpress garbage. Many of them are obvious because of terrible photoshops, randomly named branding, and those strange bold brackets in the product description.<p>But some can be harder to spot because of tricks that sellers use to essentially hijack listings for other products to carry all the positive reviews along. Or they may just go the route of putting completely fake reviews on the product. Some may even be from verified purchasers because they packed a card along with the product offering compensation for a 5 star review. Or they can get verified reviews in an even slimier way involving ordering from themselves and then shipping random crap to people who&#x27;ve they&#x27;ve sent stuff to before.<p>And then there&#x27;s the inventory that&#x27;s poisoned with counterfeits. Thanks to inventory co-mingling counterfeit and legit products can end up getting mixed together. There&#x27;s a chance that even buying from a fully legit listing will end up with you getting sent a counterfeit product.<p>However, despite all of that I do still use Amazon. Their immense investment into logistics means that many things will make it to me next-day. And their return policies allow me to order with the confidence that if I get a fraudulent item (or just something I don&#x27;t like) it will be fairly painless to get a replacement or my money back.<p>That said, I have also been making more efforts over the years to not use Amazon. I tend to buy all my major electronics from Best Buy or direct from the manufacturer. And I would <i>never</i> buy any food or medicine from Amazon. I don&#x27;t want to risk things that go into me being counterfeit.