
Amazon Says It Puts Customers First. But Its Pricing Algorithm Doesn’t - Gys
https://www.propublica.org/article/amazon-says-it-puts-customers-first-but-its-pricing-algorithm-doesnt
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thirdsun
Frankly, I don't see that much of a problem here. First of all, Amazon views
Prime as the default experience and naturally shows that pricing more
prominently. Furthermore I think it's naive to assume that pricing should be
the key factor for their ranking. As mentioned, there are probably lots of
details that influence the ranking, however as an anecdote I can say that
shipping by Amazon and Prime-enabled is one my personal key requirements. I'll
only use third party sellers if there are significant pricing differences or
no other options. I wouldn't be surprised if other customers behave the same
way, regardless of preferred ranking.

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Vendan
I massively prefer FBA products, cause I do have Prime and FBA means I have it
in 2 days. I hate dealing with non-FBA because experience has taught me that
non-FBA stuff has no real shipping promises, and I've had times where it took
4 weeks or more to get stuff. So yeah, this seems like it's putting my wants
first.

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hga
A couple of caveats on FBA: I've noticed in the last few years that they
didn't pack FBA books hardly as well as they did their own, and I got quite a
few that had suffered from sliding around in the box. I don't know if they're
still as willfully careless, since I pretty much stopped buying books
delivered that way.

And I've had great overall experiences with Amazon Merchant booksellers
shipping themselves, by following a couple of rules: really, _really_ avoid
anyone with a score lower than 96% and/or too few shipments to be
statistically significant, and use that to bias choice.

And try to get books scored better than Good, among other things, that means
minor damage in shipping like bent corners is, to me, inconsequential. Also in
theory avoids underlining/highlighting, which I _really_ don't like (it can't
be 100%, e.g. I remember both myself and the seller missing some underlining
in the middle of the book until I actually read it). And I've been generally
lucky when I choose to buy a "Good" quality book, ah, one other tip is to of
course look for specific to the copy of the book condition description instead
of boiler plate.

Pretty much the same for CDs, although for my purposes a CD's case is sturdy
enough to survive Amazon or anyone else's packing (can almost always replace
the case if I want to anyway), and if you're really only interested in the
music, you can sometimes get great deals when collateral is missing (inserts,
covers, etc.).

And in terms of shipping time, for general goods, a 96% rating and a realistic
promise for delivery time is good enough. A company can't screw up too many
times and maintain a good rating like that.

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Vendan
It's not a matter of them "not meeting the promise", it's them promising "4~6
weeks delivery". Sure, they made the promise, but I'd rather pay $2 more for
FBA and get it in 2 days.

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hga
Ah, yeah, companies like that I never buy from, something that far out means
either they don't have it in stock and e.g. may have trouble getting it, and
you're likely to get a better deal elsewhere from a vendor that deals with the
item in quantity, or they're so messed up they can't get it out any time
sooner, which I take as a very bad sign.

Of course, if something is being shipped slowly and therefore cheaply from
e.g. Japan, that's fine. And the U.K. book and CD vendors take a while, but
they don't quote periods hardly that long, and in my experience under-promise
and over-deliever. But I'll frequently pay a bit more to get something sooner
than from them.

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zubairq
Actually I think amazon does put customer service high on their list.... I
wrote about it here:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/day-31-write-every-
carphone-w...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/day-31-write-every-carphone-
warehouse-sucks-why-win-zubair-quraishi)

~~~
hga
Good essay on the "semi-random acts of kindness can be paid back a
hundredfold", but one thing I've noticed is that there are few sales channels
that are worse than the ones for cellphones. Only bad experience my family has
had on eBay was an iPhone who's cell radio didn't work (the rest did,
including WiFi), and somehow the seller gamed eBay into screwing my father out
of $300+ dollars.

And you can just tell from the reviews and seller feedback that Amazon is not
immune to this, I pretty much wouldn't buy a cellphone through them, unless it
was directly from them, I'd, in the US, for example, go to B&H Photo Video
first (see Joel On Software's essay on them for how serious they are about
customer service, although that was written years after I started patronizing
them).

That said, I and my father have each bought a cell phone through Amazon
without problem, back in 2012-3.

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TheAdamist
I wish i could configure amazon to never see 3rd party products/suppliers.
Yeah you can do it on each search once you get into a category, But i'm on
amazon.com to buy from amazon, not shady bobs fake electronics.

