this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024
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Mildly Infuriating

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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.

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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.

[–] Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah, their plan is: deduce what kind of thing they want, broaden it to include more sponsored products, list as many as possible to boost ad revenue, try as hard as possible to get them to cave and buy a sponsored product so we can make more money from ad revenue. Sucks as a customer. Probably sucks as a supplier, it's the standard monopoly enshitified money extraction maximiser.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I boycot Amazon because that company is fucking evil.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I salute you, lord wiggle.

[–] autriyo@feddit.org 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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. ?

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

skintflint

https://skinflint.co.uk/

Oh wow, I visited, and instead of the usual cookie popup (where you have to click to accept all cookies or customise them), it put a little box in the corner saying "Do not track mode detected. Storing only strictly necessary cookies." which then automatically closed!

My browser often detects and auto-fills the more common cookie dialogs for me, but this is the loveliest cookie experience anywhere.

I randomly decided to pretend to want a new mobile - RELEVANT filters that ACTUALLY FILTER!

Thank you so much for this recommendation.

[–] deegeese@sopuli.xyz 76 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 69 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I have literally used their own filter system to find something with very specific specs and it still shows me totally unrelated bullshit because just like SEO, people will just put an entire fucking dictionary in the description or tags so it always shows up no matter what you're searching for.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 46 points 5 days ago

And sometimes the filters are completely irrelevant. You're searching for correction fluid and the filters say 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb-512Gb, 520Mb.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago

Amazon: the world’s largest enshittification platform!

[–] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 27 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yesterday was some houseware. There wasn't anything Chinese in the listing, but it was the same sponsored wrong products again and again and again and again and again and again. I get more Chinese stuff when I look for electrical items, but sometimes the Chinese stuff works out for me.

[–] locahosr443@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

If you make the same search for houseware on AliExpress I bet you'll find most of what you saw on Amazon

[–] radicalautonomy@lemmy.world 42 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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

[–] 474D@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

I mean I bought one toilet seat, clearly I need 16 more, they know us so well

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] frostysauce@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

Your phone's Wi-Fi told them exactly where in the store you were. That's how they knew what you were looking at.

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[–] tibi@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Nyxicas@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 3 days ago

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!" -

[–] 2ugly2live@lemmy.world 14 points 4 days ago

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.“

[–] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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?

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[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 34 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh wow, that sounds fantastic. What adblocker is that, and how do you configure it?

[–] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 16 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I'm using Adguard, but most will have element blocking as a feature.

Basically, I select "block ads on this website", and I click on the element. A small box comes up where I can fine tune the selected element (I usually do this to get cleaner results), then I preview and confirm the setting.

I'm able to then take that filter, and use it pretty much anywhere else that I use adguard (Android phone, another computer, etc.). It's awesome.

But like I said, most adblockers will have this feature, including the popular ublock origin. It might just be under a different name.

You can do this for any website :)

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[–] _____@lemm.ee 19 points 5 days ago (10 children)

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

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[–] Breadhax0r@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

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

[–] Limonene@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago (7 children)

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.

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[–] randon31415@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago

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?"

[–] brlemworld@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 14 points 5 days ago (12 children)

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.

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[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

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[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

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

[–] jacksilver@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] kipo@lemm.ee 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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

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