1mo ago

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

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.

112 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  And sometimes the filters are completely irrelevant. You're searching for correction fluid and the filters say 1Gb, 2Gb, 4Gb-512Gb, 520Mb.
  
  Amazon: the world’s largest enshittification platform!

The niche thing you just bought just two months ago and that no one would ever need two of in their life.
- I mean I bought one toilet seat, clearly I need 16 more, they know us so well
- 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.
  
  I looked at ONE light switch because I couldn’t find exactly the type in other stores (single-gang dual 2-way multipole) and now they will NOT stop emailing me about electrical equipment and supplies as if i was a contractor
- 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.
  
  Your phone's Wi-Fi told them exactly where in the store you were. That's how they knew what you were looking at.
  
  Is Lowe's like a physical amazon store?

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.
- Oh wow, that sounds fantastic. What adblocker is that, and how do you configure it?
  
  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 :)
- Yeah I've been doing that for years on every site I use frequently (so far that I even got my own YouTube filter list on github). It doesn't help with broken searches ignoring operators, but it makes the web a much better place nonetheless!

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

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.
- I clicked through to their browse all products page, and it was a thing of organised beauty.

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.
- McMaster carr
  
  Honestly that site is genius.
  They provide as much information as possible for all their hardware. Specs, drawings, CAD models, similar products, item codes, CAGE codes, everything! All without requiring an account or membership. Why do that when someone could just take that info and use it to find a cheaper source? Especially when they're more expensive than other sources by 25% or more? Well because engineers will often grab their models and use them in their designs, and when it comes time to order things, knowing the parts ordered will have the exact dimensions and specifications as the ones in your model is often worth the premium. Plus they have so many products that if it's not on their website, there's a good chance it doesn't exist anywhere.
  Most other hardware sellers use the worst model imaginable for their sites. The kind where it's like "Oh, you'd like some tubing? Well give us an email, make an account, and send a message to our sales team to put together a quote for you. And we won't share the full specs until you do, so there's no guarantee that we even have what you want."
  McMaster really embraced the philosophy that if you make things as easy as possible for your customers, they'll choose you even if you're more expensive.
- NONE of the page is the "specifications" section
  You may want to double check that. Actually, most of this page could have been left off if that's all you were looking for.
  
  The "specifications" section is a collapsed section about a quarter of the way down. It starts out collapsed on every page, even if you open it up every time.
- About 1/8 of the page is the product. Almost NONE of the page is the “specifications” section, which is the most important section.
  Not a very useful metric once you add in infinite scroll. More important is the fact is the "frequently bought together" section between the product and its details, all of which are collapsed by default (unless you did that)
  
  I didn't collapse or uncollapse anything on the page before taking the screenshot. On loading, all the spam sections are uncollapsed, and the "specifications" section is collapsed.

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
- Just go to AliExpress, same shit, half the price. Bonus points that while their initial results may not be exactly what you want their recommendation engine usually gets you there quickly enough.
  
  Maybe it's just my experience, but I have yet to find something on AliExpress for cheaper than somewhere else.
- When I look for electronic stuff, that's exactly what happens. It turns out some of it is good, some of it is awful, but there's absolutely no way to tell.

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?"

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.“

I boycot Amazon because that company is fucking evil.
- I salute you, lord wiggle.

They do it on purpose. Makes you stay longer, increasing chances of extra sales
- So annoying.
  
  Tbh, I find it a little more than mildly infuriating. Verging on very infuriating.

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.
- Where are you buying things that didn't have ads or sponsored content?
  
  My neighbour
  
  I’m not sure what you mean?

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?
- Of course I would want to buy it every week. Who wouldn't buy the book every week if they liked it so much they bought it once. Buy! Buy! Buy!

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.
- Which, let's be clear, is not an inherently bad thing. Most sane people don't want to reinvent the wheel. If you have a foundation that works and can easily be built off of in a reusable way the. You ultimately end up saving a lot of time and money.
  Now, going back to your dig, it is true that Amazon has too many similar services, a lot of which could have just been an offering under an existing service. If you offer a certification just for memorizing what all of your services do then you may have gone too far.
  
  Yeah, I always hated that the foundational cert (or whatever it's called) is basically just "what service is this". The worst is that at the rate things change the info doesn't stay relevant for long.
  Sagemaker has literally gone through tens of iterations at this point. Hard to keep straight what it does and doesn't offer.
- I spent a few days ago hunting for a EC2 service that I was being charged for. The AWS budget said it came from "EC2 Services" which yeah, could mean anything.
  Started by typing EC2 then clicking every single tab to find what was turned on. I finally found the service because there was a region filter, that let me find out that I was using a EBS that I left activated when I was goofing around in another region.
  
  Yeah, the only thing more confusing than figuring out what service best fits your need is figuring out how it's billed.
  Some services will spin up eight other things and all will look like separate things from a billing perspective, if you aren't careful with tagging/managing things.

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.
- 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.

Get the same feelings with Netflix. Like it feels like I'm some experiment for them instead of a customer looking to watch movies.
- Actually you may well be part of their “beta experience” which typically sucks ass.
  Turn it off in your settings.
  
  Like it kept trying to recommend Carry On after I gave it a thumbs down. That movie was fucking garbage I couldn't get through the first like 20 minutes

we need anti-enshitification extensions and apps for amazon and ebay, the former is even worse
- It might just be the things I go on ebay for but they've really cleaned up their site in the past ~10 years. I remember when searching for literally anything would give you results like OP's pic but I haven't seen that in years. I think i do like 80% of my online shopping there nowadays
  
  Today I gave up on amazon and found the item I wanted on ebay, which was much easier to browse because it showed me each product from each seller roughly once. It was so much easier. I saw the same stuff as I saw on amazon but about 80 other products too. Amazon used to be the ones with the product range, and that's how they got big. Now they've enshitified quite thoroughly.
- the former is even worse
  Amazon is worse than Amazon?

In the wake of worker strikes and Amazon’s continued enshittification, I have pledged to stop buying anything from them.
- That's a good idea. I should do the same. They're really annoying anyway.

Your first mistake is giving Amazon money.
- Very true. Jeff Bezos already has enough. And, like most countries, Amazon doesn't pay tax in my country through the typical shady tax dodges multinational corporations pull.

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.

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. ?
- 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.

Also you have automatically been signed up and charged for Prime.
- So hard to avoid signing up for Prime.
  Even harder to cancel your free trial of Prime if you ever caved and took the free trial.
  I don't know why they don't do Prime for free all year. I always buy more when I'm on free trial Prime. It would be an easy way to get more of my cash. But I guess enshittifying executives are going to demand more customer charges, and maybe they get more money from paid Prime subscribers than they get from increased purchasing anyway.
  
  It's not just a matter of avoiding it, I have been signed up for prime on days I didn't eve use Amazon. The system will sign you up on its own.

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.
- Northern Europeans doing it well as usual.
  
  Well the competitor is owned by the largest supermarket chain and they try to follow amazons buns model, so it's kinda shitty and capitalistic all the same.
  But because it's smaller in scale and doesn't impact the silly chain that much it's still mildly better (think Amazon right years ago.
  But for the time being it's slightly better. I think it's great that Amazon has a competitor that didn't lose out.

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.
- Yeah, amazon used to be cheaper than other places. Now if they are, it's only by pennies. The enshitification process continues. Hope your Benelux place thrives on good service.

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

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.
- For computer stuff I just use newegg. The filters are great in most categories and once you find something you can search for that specific product on Amazon to compare prices.
  
  I love trying to search for specific products. "Oh, I see you're searching for a specific item from a specific name brand. Let me show you everything but that name brand. But first, let me show you stuff that also isn't that item first. Enjoy."
  
  I abandoned Newegg because of all the negative comments about not being able to return stuff.

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.

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.
- Someone wrote the code that puts the same listing four times per page.

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

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

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