
Buying Lotion on Amazon.com - cdubzzz
https://chrxs.net/articles/2017/06/11/buying-lotion-amazon-com/
======
luminousbit
It's important to note that at least some of this problem is the fault of
traditional retail. Aveeno MAKES all these ridiculous size and quantity
combinations (at least some of these multipacks are shrink wrapped together).
When a store stocks them, they choose to stock only a few. But Amazon is
giving you GLOBAL insight into all available options Aveeno makes from any
distributor who has access to them.

It would be nice if Amazon could make the comparison easier for us. But in
this case most of the problem is that it's simply exposing the underlying
wholesale/distributor model directly to the consumer.

~~~
s0rce
For largely B2B McMaster Carr seems to have solved this. I can easily select
items, the sizes, quantities and prices are all obvious. Amazon should strive
for this level of simplicity for more of it's items. Especially compare the
Amazon supply/small parts items to McMaster options. Did like the lotion
described in the article is even worse.

~~~
sjburt
I think a big part of McMaster's model is to be able to put a very high price
on things, knowing that for business customers the time saved by having such a
well-organized inventory is more than worth it.

They also white-label almost everything so that it's hard to go directly to
their suppliers.

I'm guessing that that level of curation comes at a high cost to add new SKUs
to the catalog; they go as far as to commission artwork and provide CAD
models. It would be really hard for Amazon to approach that while striving for
minimal margins and letting 3rd parties add SKUs in huge quantities.

~~~
Washuu
Having the CAD models is amazing. Being able to drop their ready made models
into my projects for verification before ordering the parts is worth it.

------
bittermang
I used to work in Amazon Seller Support. It's a complicated issue when you
build a platform for selling things, and then let anyone in the world use it
without any training whatsoever.

You got a lot of sellers coming over from sites like eBay, where your listing
is your listing. You upload an item to sell, it gets a page all to itself, and
you can do whatever you want with the listing quality. Then they migrate over
to Amazon because reasons, and can't cope with the fact that items for sale
are grouped together with everyone selling that item. This leads to tons of
shenanigans like people making up their own UPCs to get their own listings,
using the wrong UPCs to get onto more popular listings, and all manner of
trickery.

Occasionally you could catch a case with one of these malfested ASINs, and
work with the catalog to unwind the broken mess. Unfortunately, more often
than not, that wasn't your job to do that. Further, doing that would take a
long time, which would destroy your average case resolve time. Better quality
of the catalog was not job number one, only metrics, always metrics, ever
increasing and eventually impossible to satisfy metrics. As far as I could
tell, quality control wasn't anyone's job, and thus it led to the Amazon
catalog you have today. It's almost as if Amazon has decided that bad quality
listings will lead to low sales, and the problem will eventually sort itself
out, but as we can see that has not happened.

For myself, before and after the job, I always look for Shipped and Sold by
Amazon. Otherwise, you literally never know what you're going to get, and it's
on you as the buyer if you want to take the gamble or wade into the waters of
the A to Z return guarantee. But that's a whole other mess for another thread.

~~~
cdubzzz
Thanks for the insight. That sounds about like what I figured while thinking
about this.

And yeah, I think the "fulfilled by Amazon" filtering is the key to simplify
things. It won't always be the best deal (and isn't in this case) but there is
a real sense of "risk" with other options - something that I don't think can
be solved by the third party store pages and seller feedback.

~~~
acuozzo
> And yeah, I think the "fulfilled by Amazon" filtering is the key to simplify
> things.

This is actually different from products shipped and sold by Amazon since
Amazon now stores and ships products on behalf of its third party sellers as
part of its fulfillment program in order to increase the number of products
available under Prime.

So it's possible to receive a product stored and shipped by Amazon at their
own facilities, but sold by a third party seller. The user to whom you replied
searches specially for products sold by Amazon itself. Amazon is the seller in
this case.

------
matthewmacleod
As a user I find Amazon astonishingly hostile when searching for products.
Sure - the delivery, order process, support etc. is excellent, but I find it
difficult to actually find products in the first place.

I appreciate they've used some kind of system to identify products and group
the various options from different sellers into one listing. But I've never
seen an example where this has worked well. The sizes, styles, colours and so
on that are displayed are always completely mad. Like, enough to the point
where I frequently abandon my attempt and just buy from somewhere with more
sensible categorisation.

~~~
seanp2k2
A lot of this is because of 3rd-party sellers. To make things easier, I
usually filter by "ships from and sold by Amazon". Some of the pricing and
"styles" for 3rd parties are ridiculous because they're algorithm-driven.
That's likely why the $9.99/oz price happened.
[https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-
is-c...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3060803/algorithmic-pricing-is-creating-
an-arms-race-on-amazons-marketplace) has some context on _why_ and
[http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358)
talks about _how_ . TL;DR Amazon picks (using _their_ secret algos, ofc) which
selection should be the default among the sellers. Everyone wants to be that
to get more sales. Sellers then fix the price to a different item which has
the price sometimes fixed to that other item, or potentially a loop with more
products involved. They then proceed to algorithmically price each other far
beyond normal costs for the item.

~~~
notatoad
sure, it's "because" of the third-party sellers but it's still amazon's fault.
If they want to provide options for third-party sellers in their product
listings, it's amazon's responsibility to make sure those listings are
correctly categorized.

------
giardini
It's called "the paradox of choice":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice)

There is undoubtedly money to be made here (one way or another - see last
reference): the supermarket chain ALDI has invested in a strategy where they
provide limited choices of goods (e.g., spaghetti sauces, breads, etc.) thus
reducing buyers' anxiety, store size and increasing profits. It seems to be
working:

"Why I choose to have less choice":

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/choose...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/choose-
less-choice-shopping-around)

"Why C[onvenience]-stores Should Consider the Aldi Approach":

[http://www.csnews.com/product-categories/other-
merchandise-s...](http://www.csnews.com/product-categories/other-merchandise-
services/why-c-stores-should-consider-aldi-approach?cc=8)

Finally, there's a debate as to whether the paradox of choice is real or not:

"Is the Paradox of Choice Not So Paradoxical After All?"

[http://freakonomics.com/2009/12/02/is-the-paradox-of-
choice-...](http://freakonomics.com/2009/12/02/is-the-paradox-of-choice-not-
so-paradoxical-after-all/)

~~~
mc32
Hmm. I like having choice in the sense that I can choose what I prefer and
someone else can seek their choice as well. An alternative is only having
access to the popular product in that segment (maybe I don't like Fujis, or I
prefer whole milk over skim).

I think the paradox of choice is an issue when you initially don't have prior
information on something, but once you know what you prefer, there is no
paradox as one is pretty much settled with one's choice.

------
evmar
To me the real lesson of this post is something about analysis paralysis and
losing financial perspective.

The majority of the options appear somewhere around $1-$2 per oz and it
appears a typical bottle is around 10oz, so the difference here in the pricing
is somewhere around $10. Worrying about this problem for more than about 10
minutes loses all the money you'd "save" by ensuring you're on the cheap end
of that spread.

~~~
cdubzzz
Author here - this is perfectly true. I, perhaps ineffectively, tried to cover
that briefly in the conclusion - basically I am worried about dealing with
this sort of thing when I become a father in a few months. Expenses will rise,
my wife's salary will fall, and time for doing this sort of research will be
hard to find.

~~~
silencio
If you combine your story with the stories of counterfeit items sold by third
parties on Amazon, you'll pretty much just never buy certain items from Amazon
ever again.

I even found reviews for _counterfeit diapers_ on top of this problem of 10000
types of packaging for the same diaper and so now I just buy all my diapers
and my prenatal vitamins from Costco.

------
dantillberg
Amazon.com also has a tendency to combine different (but related, sort of)
products into the same page as different "sizes" or "styles" supposedly of the
same product.

Reviews from all of these are merged, as are the Questions & Answers.

For a current example,
[https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OUTBK/ref=oh_aui_de...](https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OUTBK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00)
combines listings for computer cases in a variety of tower and rackmount
sizes, server racks, drawers, and rails. Separate items all available as
options on this page.

For reviews, Amazon now labels them with the "style", i.e. one review is for
the "Server Rails" style, while another is for the "Server Case" style (though
there are a half dozen different "Server Case" style items on the page, each
with different characteristics). Questions & Answers are just a free-for-all
that requires humans to sift through context and figure out which product is
actually being discussed.

One of the questions on the linked product page, ironically asks, "Do I need
rails to mount this in a rack?" It's a complicated question to answer because
the question could have been posed about one of the many 2U or 4U cases
("yes", unless maybe one of them ships with rails) or it could have been asked
about a tower case ("no, this isn't rack-mountable"), or it could have been
asked about the rails or the rack themselves (as humans, we screen these
possibilities out by context and logic), or about the shelves offered (not a
completely unreasonable question -- maybe a shelf could be sold without
rails?).

Or if we're not so observant, we click Buy after reading Q&A and reviews, only
to later learn that we bought a different "style."

------
Fifer82
I really don't get on well with Amazon (uk). Finding products is hard. I mean
there are things in life that you research, then there are things that aren't
really worth researching. Examples: I wanted an Exercise Ball once, Or a
waterproof bluetooth speaker.

These types of search yield generic cruft, and despite all the options, none
of them seem to have any meaningful impact in the search.

The only other notable thing winding me up is ebay "not collection only".

~~~
wutbrodo
> I wanted an Exercise Ball once, Or a waterproof bluetooth speaker.

If it helps, my strategy is usually to do five minutes of research through
Google first and then just get the item from Amazon. The only things I
discover through Amazon's search function are things that are more or less
commodities, in which case I buy the cheapest that fits my constraints for
whom reviews aren't horrible. I buy and have bought a LOT of stuff on Amazon
and I've never experienced the choice paralysis or search issues everyone is
talking about here.

------
JulianWasTaken
This unfortunately matches my experiences shopping for conditioner, toilet
paper toothbrushes, toothpaste etc. on Amazon.

Someone on HN at some point made a web site that used to list the cheapest
items in some common categories by unit price. It was called
papersomethingorother, but I un-bookmarked it because it went down awhile
back.

And it gets even worse when you find the typical retailer game where you list
unit price for the same product in two different units (price per ounce for
one size, and per gallon for another) so now have fun doing unit conversions
too.

It's all just a complete mess.

~~~
Symbiote
Why would you buy this stuff from Amazon?

I can go to any of about four supermarkets between home and work, or two
personal care stores, to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, conditioner etc. The
shops have chosen between three and ten or so lines from several
manufacturers, depending which one I chose, and all the products are
legitimate and meet the required quality and safety regulations. Searching
online seems much harder than looking on a shelf and picking one.

(You may have fewer shops close by, but presumably there's at least one shop
selling these goods.)

~~~
acuozzo
> Why would you buy this stuff from Amazon?

You can purchase products in larger sizes for lower $/[unit] and in many
circumstances set them to be automatically purchased and shipped on a periodic
basis for even greater savings all from the comfort of your couch.

You can additionally get 5% back on top of all of this if you use an Amazon
Prime credit card and pay it off monthly.

The savings add up over time and it also results in a cart that is
considerably less full during the weekly grocery shopping trip. Paper towels
eat up a great amount of the volume in a standard US grocery store shopping
cart.

The easiest way to avoid the pain many users experience is to exclusively
purchase products shipped and sold by Amazon and to make use of third party
sellers only when necessary.

~~~
cdubzzz
My specific example (from the article) seems to counter some of what you
suggest, though. E.g. -

\- Of the 37 sizes, only three are available for subscription.

\- Even the 5% subscription discount is not the best deal.

\- The lower $/unit on larger quantities does not consistently hold true.

I was unaware of the additional 5% back on the Amazon Prime card, but I'm not
sure that should really factor in here. My AmEx, for example, gives 6% cash
back at grocery stores and I'm sure other cards have comparable offers. Also,
Amazon Prime, like my AmEx card, has a yearly fee that will eat away at some
of those additional savings.

If we accept that the amount of choice Amazon.com provides is a good thing
(and I think it is), does the subscription model not defeat that advantage? I
think it does, at least to some degree. Since the 15% discount subscription
price is the best deal (on Amazon.com), why even have the other 36 "sizes"?

What you suggest as the "easiest way to avoid pain" is precisely what I fear -
that Amazon.com may eventually become "shopping".

------
smacktoward
The best part is when you're switching through the various sizes, styles, etc.
and you find out that some of them are actually _completely different
products_ than the one you were shopping for. How did they get lumped
together? No indication is provided. So you have to be _very careful_ when
ordering these types of things to avoid buying something completely other than
what you actually wanted.

~~~
leoedin
This is frustratingly common. Worse is that it also lumps the reviews
together. It's really easy to find a product you're interested in, see that
the reviews are positive and then on further inspection realise that the
reviews are for a completely different item, and that there's either no
reviews or much less positive reviews for the specific item you're looking at.

~~~
smacktoward
It even happens in _books_ now, and books used to be one of the few types of
products where Amazon's UI was more or less bulletproof. In books that have
multiple translated versions available, for instance, switching from
"hardcover" to "paperback" can switch you to buying an entirely different
translation. Even worse, the _only indication they provide of this_ is that
the cover art is different, which is often true for hardcover and paperback
versions of the same book too. So it is _very_ easy to buy the wrong thing.

Maybe Amazon has just given up on UI and assumes that everyone will be buying
via Alexa?

------
BhavdeepSethi
I actually find the options amazingly helpful. For most items, there is a
description of what the different options mean.

Would you rather have them show just a single option, which may or may not
work for you? Or give you the choice of one that works for /you/ the best?

~~~
aidenn0
If amazon had a !#$%!#$%ing table like TFA posted then it would be fine; I was
ordering something recently, and it was similar to this where the price per
unit was an order of magnitude different between all the options, with the
additional complexity that some options were "add-on" only (cannot buy except
in orders totaling a minimum of $25).

~~~
DanBC
Yes, the combination of "add on only", or "prime exclusive" makes shopping on
Amazon a lot more stressful than it should be.

------
freyr
In the past couple years, Amazon.com has been a prime example of a company
getting too big; because of its size, it can get away with consumer-hostile
behaviors like implementing a terrible UX, shipping counterfeit goods, or
allowing sellers to game the review system and put cheap products at the top
of the search results with hundreds of bought-and-paid-for 5-star reviews. If
Amazon had serious competition, I don't think they could get away with this
stuff.

But is there any good alternative? I buy from Target.com whenever an order
includes food or health products, because I actually have _some_ confidence in
their supply chain. But of course their shipping efficiency is years behind
Amazon's.

~~~
acostello
> But is there any good alternative?

They don't have a million different options like Amazon does, but Costco is an
excellent option. They have an amazing customer service with a very generous
return policy, high quality products, great value proposition. Plus they have
B&M stores, for when you want to actually try things before purchasing, etc.

~~~
freyr
Thank you, I had no idea Costco was selling so much stuff online now.

------
dangson
He'll also now see ads for lotions across the entire internet. To me that's
the creepiest part about shopping on Amazon. I will see ads for things I
searched for days afterwards.

------
twblalock
The size and variety issues are a big problem when buying shoes. I see the
following sizes on some Chuck Taylors: 9.5 Men, 9 1/2 Men, 9.5 (D M), "Womens
11.5/Mens 9.5," and some European sizes mixed in.

If I want to buy some shoes, I have to check every combination of my size and
the colors to find what I am looking for. Sometimes there are multiple names
for the same color, too, e.g. "gray" and "charcoal."

I think the bottom line that Amazon is letting sellers enter whatever values
they want. They should make sellers choose things like shoe sizes from a
dropdown that has a standardized list.

------
dmritard96
I am also increasingly leary of amazon.com since I simply feel they are
getting too big. I don't really care for brick and mortar options that much
but rather I simply don't feel there is enough competition to keep amazon on
their toes and ensure that competition will get consumers a good deal going
forward.

------
mrweasel
The main issue that Amazon have, is that they don't give a shit about data
quality. Or more at least they didn't, they cared more about having everything
available and figure that they could deal with the complexity of product data
later. This is Amazons biggest mistake, they never considered how complex
product data, and perhaps they don't need to care. Profit certainly seems to
indicate that it's a minor detail.

Amazons search only work on titles, nothing else. At least that's what they
tell you when using the reseller API. That's it why title on Amazon sucks and
why you can't find anything specific, yet are able to find EVERYTHING. Amazon
have perhaps 200.000 different HDMI cables, produced by far fewer
manufactures, it's just the branding that's different. Amazon doesn't have to
care though, it doesn't matter which cable you by, they get paid anyway.

If Amazon had chosen to deal with having good, high quality product data, it
would have taken them many more years, and much more resources to get where
they are. More importantly: They would have made it much harder for resellers
to push their products feeds to Amazon, and they would have pick eBay as their
main platform instead.

tldr; Amazon have shitty product data and it doesn't matter, because shopping
on Amazons platform is a lot easier than trying to find the same product
elsewhere.

------
jumpkickhit
It would be funny (not really) if the lotion that arrived was counterfeit.

Due to Amazon's "just throw it all in the same pile!" method of combining
their and re-sellers stock.

------
tzs
> However, my biggest reason for avoiding Amazon.com is simply that it has
> become incredibly confusing to shop there. Searching for just about anything
> will yield thousands of results and it takes (me) a lot of effort to
> determine which one is appropriate.

On the other hand once you _have_ figured out what to buy once, it is trivial
on Amazon to buy that again when you need more.

Consider toothpaste. I use Crest, purchased at my local Walmart. They seem to
stock a bazillion different kinds of Crest, emphasizing various combinations
of promoting/preventing/improving/accommodating one or more of:

    
    
      • cavities
      • gingivitis
      • sensitivity
      • plaque
      • tartar
      • whitening
      • fresh breath
      • surface stains
      • acid erosion
    

They also come in a variety of flavors and textures (gel or paste).

I care about cavities, gingivitis, plaque, tartar, and acid erosion. I am
indifferent to the rest, except for whitening. From what I've read there are
at least two different ways a toothpaste can promote whitening, one of which
is arguably bad for you (weakens enamel or something like that) and one of
which is neutral, and so I prefer to avoid whitening products unless I'm sure
they use a definitely non-bad method.

The last several times I've bought toothpaste at Walmart I checked my current
tube before heading to the store and attempted to buy one that matches it, and
have failed. I have no idea if I failed because Crest reshuffled the
combinations or I botched the matching, but whatever the reason I end up
spending 15 or 20 minutes in the toothpaste aisle trying to make a choice
every damned time.

The last couple of times I've checked prices toothpaste was actually cheaper
locally than via Amazon, but I'm probably going to switch to Amazon anyway
just to be able to use the "buy it again" feature.

~~~
cdubzzz
That's certainly fair.

Generally I've found that Amazon is rarely cheapest option, but I can
understand paying the convenience.

In addition to my particular type of lotion, I only buy a particular type of
toothpaste (because most toothpaste has SLS and that gives me canker sores).
Basically my approach is to find the cheapest possible price and buy it in
bulk. I have done that a few times over the past couple of years (I currently
have 10 tubes, hah) and, I think, always with different retailers. That tends
to work well for me, and I don't think Amazon.com's additional features are
worth the extra cost, in that case.

------
tomhschmidt
I also found Amazon to be increasingly difficult to navigate, which is why I
made nugget ([http://nuggetapp.co/](http://nuggetapp.co/)). nugget uses a mix
of machine and human curation to pick out awesome stuff at great prices from
Amazon.

~~~
hhorsley
Word. This looks cool

------
burntrelish1273
This seems like a perfect FNAC startup... an alternative Amazon interface that
is curated to only display the highest real rated items in a category and
lowest cost per unit. Screen-scrape and/or use an API, not hard at all. Also,
can use a stronger verification (like phone number and captcha) to ensure
comments are real and not some seller gamification spam. Basically, add a
layer of metadata that Amazon doesn't provide and a better/alternative
shopping experience. Throw in some machine learning to recommend items and
some community tips which can recommend specific items.

Something like [https://anom.az](https://anom.az)

------
ino
I've also had a taste of amazon bullshit:

I went to buy K&R C from amazon and it costed 150€. That was too much for me,
but there was a different version below it: a "used" K&R from a different
publisher and different cover, that costed 30€.

The book arrived and it's just photocopies of the original, in the form of a
book. Normal Photocopies on what seems to be a just a bit finer than the
average photocopy paper.

I've read the book. I still don't know why the original is so expensive, and
if the authors/rightholders received any of my 30€.

------
natch
Seems Amazon may be creating an opening for manufacturers to sell bulk
products direct, for that subset of consumers who just want no nonsense
options.

Example:

[https://griffinremedy.com/product/omega-3-unscented-body-
lot...](https://griffinremedy.com/product/omega-3-unscented-body-lotion-
gallon/)

~~~
cdubzzz
I have been looking for this in some cases recently. If there is a particular
product where I either know I need a certain brand or have researched options
and settled on one, I try to remember to check the manufacturer's website
first.

------
andromaton
A imagine a memo from Jeff Bezos with that link attached going around on
Monday (if not sooner)

