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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I boycot Amazon because that company is fucking evil.
I salute you, lord wiggle.
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!” -
-
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
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
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!
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.“
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.
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
Exactly. Amazon are the pushiest of the dodgy pushy salesperson.
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?
They’re not in any way associated with Amazon, as far as I know. But apparently they sell their customer data to them - and immediately.
That is pretty scummy.
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!
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 :)
Thank you very much indeed, knowledgeable internet stranger.
Is this all on a desktop/laptop computer? I’m on my phone 95% of the time but I see a lot of conversations on Lemmy about how to block ads or work around YouTube’s restrictions (or whatever) and they make it seem like people are on a desktop full time. I guess it’s just a little surprising to me if that’s the case.
UBlock Origin works on Firefox Mobile for Android the same as on Desktop. It’s only Apple users who eat shit.
On Apple we have Firefox focus, it’s a single tab browser with Adblock. Works for YouTube and other websites.
As long as you can run the adguard browser extension in a mobile browser, then you can add new elements to block.
But if that’s not an option, you can create those rules on a desktop browser, then add them to Adguard on mobile (the app, not the browser extension).
As long as you have the rules in a filter list, it’ll work anywhere. These amazon specific sanitation rules may already be available on public adblocking lists, and in that case, they could work regardless of the adblocking app being used.
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 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.
There might be a bit of a knack to it. Anything brand name or bulk generally there aren’t a lot of savings. With the right search terms you can usually uncover third shift items, whether that’s you’re thing or not. Anything you see on Amazon sold by companies with names like HSUUEHE are often 20-40% cheaper. You might need to dig a little, there may be 20-30 listings of the same product from different sellers, some just list things at the same price you’d see them on Amazon. Anything that looks mass produced on Etsy can usually be found as well.
Guess I gotta develop the knack. Thanks for the input!
Haha, tbh it stemmed from a mild fascination with the true range of utter crap and oddly specific items that are available on Ali. Mostly it went the other way (finding stuff on Amazon/Etsy that I’d seen on Ali and being a bit nonplussed with the price on the other platforms).
Edit: derped the image upload
Vs
Interesting. That may be cheaper for you, but once I convert currencies and count shipping, that item costs a little over $1 more from Ali. And then the shipping is likely going to take 1-2 months. For me, it’s cheaper and faster to order that item from Amazon.
Interesting, might be very regional, it’s about a 75% saving for me, choice shipping typically takes about 7-10 days, it’s free if you spend more than £8 (not sure of that’s regional too though)
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.
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.
Maybe I’m just used to looking up spec sheets but this is pretty standard.
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.
