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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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The only thing amazon had was a brand. They've sold it for short term profit and now it's just a shittier aliexpress. The question is, why not go for the real thing?
Shipping speed for me, Aliexpress is 11 days or less, Amazon Prime 2 days or less. I think its funny they’ve copied Fedex with their main routes being in-house and their last-mile being “independent” contractors (Fedex Ground / Amazon Flex), and now Fedex will copy them with their upcoming FDX platform, which I believe is supposed to be an upgrade to shoprunner that will continue to sell from other Vendors but more like how amazon and walmart do it, where its a footnote on the item details.
Yep.
If I can wait = AliExpress.
If I can’t wait=Amazon next day, then return when the AliExpress one arrives.
Whats your take on temu
It feels more iffy than AliExpress. I got a series of items from Remy that were technically the description but at the lowest quality possible to qualify. AliExpress refund system has been solid for me.
Butting in: Temu has been aggressively pursuing a market share, once it has reached a large audience the deals will be less good. It also enables various varieties of affiliate marketing which get a little scammy (you’ve probably had a Facebook friend or random TikTok aggressively push Temu) and the app harvests a shit ton of data from you.
AliExpress has been fairly consistent for years. AliBaba is what a lot of merchants in the US use to purchase and resell goods, AliExpress just feels like taking out a middleman.
Ultimately, it’s best to comparison shop. Amazon, Temu, Ali will all often have the same item up, just find the one that’s cheapest.
Depends who you buy from. I've had shipping take 2-3 weeks on some items since the sellers are just the same Chinese companies as Ali.
Honest question here...
I was always under the impression that AliExpress is worse than Amazon. Now, Amazon is not good, I know that, but I guess the narratives I was fed is that AliExpress is like Wish, and just terrible, counterfeit/knockoff products (Amazon on that fast track), excessive data capture, and I thought CCP (probably confusing with Temu).
Anyway, can you quick explain how AliExpress is a less shitty Amazon? I'll start doing some shopping there if that's the case.
Amazon has essentially become a drop shipping front for AliExpress. You're getting the exact same terrible, knockoff products, just marked up and stored in an Amazon warehouse so you get it in two days instead of two weeks. They're both shitty, but at least with AliExpress you aren't paying extra for the middleman to make a profit.
I mean it completely depends on what you’re buying. Don’t blame Amazon that your $15 wireless earbuds with no brand name feels cheap and gets hot.
I find myself half agreeing with this and half disagreeing.
Should we not hold Amazon accountable for not vetting what's on their store?
If I went in to a physical shop and bought a knife, then when I got home the handle fell off, is it not reasonable to be angry at the brand and the shop I bought it from?
Yeah, it's not their product, but they gave the product their approval in the form of carrying the item for sale.
If Amazon marketed themselves as an open marketplace, like eBay, I'd say fair enough. But that's not what they do, Amazon markets themselves as an online store with their own warehouses. They're more akin to an online supermarket.
I don't blame Amazon for the products being shit. I blame Amazon for not doing anything about the fact the shit product has 3000 5 star reviews that are word for word on hundreds of different products.
iirc drop shipping is where they also ship it from China too. so the person dropshipping doesn't have to keep an inventory of things
and yes ofc that also happens on Amazon
if I'm buying anything on AliExpress it's usually various electronic parts and some tools. it's really good for that kind of thing, way more of that than on UK Amazon and half the price. doesn't help that I live in Ireland so occasionally you find something on UK Amazon that doesn't ship to Ireland. the downside of AliExpress is that it takes a month for whatever you buy to arrive and the website is a mess
I had thought that electronics were specifically the worst options for counterfeit items. Things labels cables not being certified, or hard external hard drives filled with flash cards. That sort of thing.
I'm in the US, so maybe our Amazon markets are notably different in choices and prices.
I'd wager they're not talking electronic parts like hard drives, but electronic parts like microcontrollers and capacitors, stuff you solder together. It is pretty good for that in my experience in the US, you just have to know what you want beforehand and be good about reading the descriptions.
That’s exactly what I use them for. LED strips, ESP32 controllers, cables, ZigBee devices for home automation, etc.
You are generally correct. But alixpress is like Amazon. If you find a good seller on their platform chances are you can build rapport and receive quality products. I know a few people who make vapes in America but buy most of their parts off aliexpress and they are all solid pcbs for the PIDs and what not. But no not gonna buy cables off aliexpress lol
I got a great vape with a shitty battery terminal (the company what makes them fixed the issue in later models. Or I just had a defective unit) and aliexpress sourcing would explain so much.
I wouldn't buy any storage from there but I've bought things like a 10 pack of tp4056 battery chargers and a clamp multimeter for a really nice price.
Wish is an AliExpress copycat.
I'll bite. I disagree with this.
I buy things, I get them in a reasonable time at a reasonable price. If something is wrong, I can return. Their customer service is one of the best. I feel more comfortable buying things there with Prime since I know they'll take care of me.
I wish Prime was cheaper ... I wish everything was. Every company jacks up prices.
It's not even close to AliExpress. The quality of Amazon is far superior. I buy stuff from AliExpress and I have to wait 2 weeks, have worse customer support, etc. I bought something once and didn't get any info until it arrived at my door 4 weeks later. I asked what's up at week 3 and was told to wait till 4 before they can look into it.
Amazon is a marketplace, anyone can create a store and put up items. It's not really Amazon's fault that people have BS listings. It's not reasonable to human-vet every listing. Maybe they could have a better reporting system; idk.
Could they do better on ratings and other things? Sure. Heck they added the ai summary for reviews. I like that. Are they still the best general marketplace for consumers: in my opinion: yes.
I ordered a random endoscopic camera for a car issue. Less than 20 bucks. It'll be here in a couple days. It's from a random brand. If it works: great. If not: money back. I like the choice of random brands and maybe some I've heard of. Choice is good.
I'll push back on this part. They can vet just fine by raising the barrier to entry a bit. They'd have fewer products. There'd be three USB cable vendors instead of 500. That would be OK.
Leaning into Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") can be OK in some circumstances. Leave all the gates wide open and let anyone in. Steam is a good example; I find most of my games by word of mouth, and if some shithole asset flipper wants to toss their game up there, I will probably never see it until Steph Sterling points it out.
I don't think that can work for Amazon. It's too much and fraud is rampant.
I disagree. I'd rather have 500 choices and let the consumer choose than a triopoly on my poor USB cables.
Edit: Maybe the ranking system needs more work. Personally I like seeing all and making choices. Though some may just want above board picks.
Reminds me of code. Too bad ya can't just regex search combined with star ratings and some secret sauce to get rid of what the viewer thinks of as crap.
My big issue with amazon these days is that it's flooded with trash. Like sure if you want some disposable garbage that you dont think twice about or if a very specific item you know is good is for sale on their site you can use them and their return policy is good.
But otherwise the flood of no-name vendors has become like browsing a more expensive wish.com. So many randomly generated non reputable companies selling the same rebranded knockoffs of knockoffs at various price points. It used to be that at least you could go up in price bracket and get to the actual products but now even that is hard. You can check out products worth over a hundred dollars and it still have mixed reviews and no actual brand recognition . It's gotten to the point that if its something that matters or is more that $50 I search on big box sites and either order directly for them or find the item and get it off amazon.
Yeah once I stopped buying from Amazon I realised how many of my supposed needs were just wants. Like, it's ok if I can't get literal brass tacks for a project this week. It's not urgent. Nothing ever was. I didn't need any of this shit in the 90s and I don't need it now. I just got used to having it, and had to adjust to intentionally going without it (for ethical reasons).
If I have to go to different sites for my Glyceryl Monostearate, Dehydroacetic Acid, Sodium Lactate, Benzyl Alcohol, a bag of Japanese Candy, a Keyboard cable repair kit, thousands of live ladybugs, some new tiny 1/32 and 1/64 paintbrushes, and 500 pairs of dust free latex gloves then I might as well just not shop online at all.
This comment was joking btw, half that shit isn't even available on Amazon rn.
It's true though I've had orders where I bought a multimeter, soap, Szechuan pepper, and a bamboo shelf for the bath. That's at least three stores and more likely four.
It's the only advantage they have left, here in Germany Amazon has become worse and worse and worse with shipping. Unless the online store is set up in the boondonks or you live there next-day delivery is the norm, and pretty much all other shops dispatch packages on the same day as long as you order early enough, Amazon often takes days to dispatch, and if I want to use my close-by Hermes pickup they take weeks because apparently they don't like how much Hermes is charging them. And no I won't be paying for fucking prime to get a service level you get everywhere else as standard.
AliExpress, meanwhile, I mean it's hit and miss but if you're ordering something from out of a EU warehouse it arrives reasonably quickly, usually the next day after. If you're ordering directly from China all bets are off right now: The northern rail links via Russia are down, so is pretty much the red sea, what's left is the Horn of Africa or the TRACECA rail link. Also doing import yourself can be a bureaucratic nightmare possibly involving first figuring out where your local customs office is (it usually won't be local at all) if they retained the package.
You COULD go to five or six stores, or just one! ☝️
Honey, you’ve got a big storm coming when your options for consumer goods are one or two mega outlets selling shoddy cheap shit with no real competition.
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They've got an unparalleled* delivery network and kind of killer vertical integration (because they keep undercutting companies that work with them).
I mean I've been boycotting Amazon / aws for almost a decade, but they're still quite powerful.
E: maybe it is paralleled idk don't @ me, I just know it's shockingly fast in NA
They're rising in popularity in the Netherlands despite having the same delivery as any other website, things are usually just cheaper or more available on Amazon.
Cheaper for now. Amazon started that way in the US as well. That's how you get everyone to switch to your platform. Then you leave it for a bit to cultivate a dependence on said platform, until finally you increase prices and rake it in. They could do this anywhere. They have the resources to undercut just about anyone for as long as it takes to starve out the competition.
They're still the only company that can get stuff shipped to rural Canada at a decent price. AliExpress often comes out more expensive once you pay for shipping, and you lose the return policy as well.
Buy from a Canadian company you say? Ha! Long before Amazon existed the prices were already inflated and shipping was insane. Amazon was a breath of fresh air just by bringing US prices to Canada.
Except for specific items like tools and PC components, Amazon still beats every shop in Canada.
Luckily the average person doesn't care much about Amazon at all, people in the Netherlands still very much prefer physical stores and bol.com