Its all the same, you search for something on Amazon, find it, and buy. Not obvious if it is a 3rd party seller or no. It feels like all the same thing.
So are all these people who say they are buying from Amazon actually buying from 3rd party sellers on Amazon? I’m always confused by these stories with used items being delivered.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
northernlights@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
It does say “sold and shipped from amazon” in the listings, as opposed to “sold by random Chinese company”.
Tim_Bisley@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
You can see on the right side of the screen who the seller is though? It is annoying there isn’t a proper filter but you can kind of use the qualified for free shipping filter to filter out third parties.
egrets@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
As I understand it, if any seller is using Amazon fulfillment centers, the product you’re given is picked out of the same box regardless of the named seller. That makes it impossible to buy confidently from Amazon based on the reputation of the seller, and makes Amazon themselves an unreputable seller.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Customers shouldn’t have to be uber careful all the time, these are dark ui patterns.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
You can. I can. But how many people do, and how many just flick through on their phone and click “Buy now” without really looking?
northernlights@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Basically if you filter by “prime delivery” you’re sure it comes amazon
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
You can be sure it comes out of an Amazon warehouse. And that’s not the same thing.
Although frankly, it should be. I don’t know how they’ve got this cushy position where they take items from others, store them, and then ship them out for enormous fees without taking on any retailer responsibility.
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
I got something recently that was “free shipping for prime customers,” but when I had to return it, it turns out that it was different and returns were not free.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Many years ago it used to be very obvious when you were buying from Amazon vs 3rd party sellers. Today the only difference is a small bit of text that says “Shipped and sold by Amazon”. The fact that you can even get prime shipping on items from third party sellers makes it so that people often don’t realize.
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
the problem is they mingle stock from every source into one pile with no discernable way to identify what came from where.
Bunitonito@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I bought a 3 pack of Corsair LL120 RGB case fans directly from Amazon.com (as the seller) before and got a 3 pack of someone’s old case fans instead (the old swapperoo). So Amazon told me to just keep them after I sent them many photos of the box and the LPN sticker on it, and they sent me another. Take a guess what was in that box? Yup, more swapperoos. But this was back in 2016-2017 so they may have changed up how they handle returns since then, or how they isolate their own products from 3rd party ‘FBA’ sellers
titanicx@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
You don’t know that Amazon is a marketplace? So is Walmart and Target. Com for example. You can open a store on any of these platforms and sell while using them for advertisement, warehousing, and shipping. You are responsible for fees and sales etc, but they handle everything else. Yes, they have their own products as well, but most their sales come from vendors on their platform.
tempest@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
The principal issue is this, Amazon commingles stock. This means that there is one box for a particular SKU. If a seller sends product to Amazon for fulfillment it gets dumped into the bin with everyone else’s.
This means that if a seller sends counterfeit or poor products to Amazon it gets mixed in with the real ones from other sellers or Amazon’s own stock. This causes major problems as you can see.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yup, this is the real answer. Verified vendors’ stock isn’t kept separate from the shitty scammers’ stock. Vendor has 10 good memory cards in stock, and a scammer has 5 fakes? The bin will have all 15 cards… So buying from the vendor doesn’t guarantee you get a real memory card, because the counterfeits are in the same bin.
Every professional photographer knows that good SD cards are Sandisk branded and come from B&H Photo Supply… While bad SD cards are Sandisk branded and come from Amazon.
Saledovil@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
And somebody buying from the scammer could get a legitimate card, thus allowing the scammer to blend in.