'Degradation' seems to carry most (all?) of the same meaning and doesn't have those downsides.

If type "Charles dickens" in search, there should be a way to get works by Dickens exclusively. Even if you select the Web link author name, you get "in the style of"

That's the last thing I'm buying on Amazon.

Amazon pre-COVID was amazing. But 2-day shipping is now 5+ day shipping. It's chock full of cheap/fraudulent junk. It's been interesting to watch it go downhill so fast.

I also quit Prime couple of years ago. Hardly miss it.

Amazon is a marketplace, and more and more different vendors came to that place selling cheaper, shady things. They seems to have an open door policy. It's somewhat understandable.

But that same strategy got adopted in many different places.

Decathlon on their website offer products from other vendors. It's really shady as they advertise hassle free returns everywhere but that only applies to products sold by them specifically, not to majority of products available in their shop.

Kaufland (if you're in US think Germany's Walmart) has the same thing going on.

I dramatically lowered my buying from Amazon about 8 years ago, when I noticed that listings had reviews on items that were completely different than what was being listed. Apparently, sellers sell a known good product that gets good reviews, and then swap it out for something else, so that the new product can piggy back off of the good karma. Amazon just didn't shut this down for years. Also, when Fulfillment services by Amazon mixed the the official provider's inventory with 3rd party distributors and reseller inventories. Sometimes, people would get knock-offs. I knew then, Amazon would coast for at least a decade before the decline would be apparent.

I thought I'd buy more Shopify stock as a result. Dunno if I ever did.

This is not a neutral listening of all available products. Although Amazon proposes has and knows all sorts of products. It will push the ones right in your face that it wants to promote.

So if you are into a purchase, do your research on other platforms first before you order on Amazon.

It does help me buy less stuff because the process is so annoying nowadays

I told them, and they said they'd refund it, don't need to send it back, and they'd even add $15 credit.

The refund never arrived so a few weeks later I got in touch again and they said I need to send it back if I want a refund. They told me the previous CSR had lied to improve ratings. I asked who I can complain to and they said nobody and closed the chat. I reopened it, restarted the refund, it was accepted and then 2 hours later I got an email saying that unless I sent them ID my refund would be rejected and that I can "no longer contact them" about this refund. I ignored that email, sent the book back and got the refund.

Another time I bought a Samsung Fold and it cracked down the middle. I told Amazon and they said they'll refund it under warranty. I sent it back and got a warning that if I return anything else in "non original condition" I'd be banned. Even though it was a warranty return.

That level of service would have been totally unheard of for Amazon 5 years ago.

As for the article, it reads like a hit piece driven by envy. Perhaps it reflects the frustration that Britain no longer produces world-class, globally scaled internet companies—leaving its media to take petty swipes at the Americans who still do.

I shop from Amazon a couple of times per month, with Prime subscription.

Delivery is always insanely fast (within 1-2 days), I always get exactly what I ordered, prices are always lowest compared to all competition, returns are convenient and human-free, and the additional Prime Videos is a nice bonus. I am honeslty worried of local Swedish business, becase they are getting the floor wiped. I haven't had a single issue some other people are mentioning.

If you don't have Prime though, it's a different place altogether. But you don't have much of a choice - Flipkart (the other alternative) is worse in every way.

My wife ordered an iPhone and we received a salt mill and a flashlight. Called them, they said sorry send it back. But then they would not return the money cause we did not return the phone. At that point Amazon accused us for betrayal and forced us to take a lawyer to get parts of the money back.

That was our last day of using Amazon or prime video.