'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.

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.

They definitely tried to send me a used book as if it was new. I'm sick and tired of Amazon lying to me.

Just in the past three months, I've noticed a lot of changes. Orders are being lost, orders are being cancelled by them for lack of product, orders are being split, with no indication of the split -- showing all products delivered when the split portion is still in transit.

In the past, the customer could see the same order information that their Customer Support staff could see, but now we can't see as much. Recently, I had an order split three ways (three of the same item) without any notice. The shipment arrived with only one item, so I contacted Customer Support. The support rep spun on it for a while, and then told me I would receive the remainder of the shipment the next day. By the end of the call, it changed to two days. It finally arrived four days later, but that shipment also only had one item (of the three ordered). I tried contacting customer service again, but instead of letting me reach a human, Amazon forced me into an AI chat. The chatbot told me that my only option was to accept a refund for the missing (third) item. I repeatedly told it that I would rather receive the item, but it insisted that was impossible. So it refunded part of my purchase price. Two days later, I received the third item (with no shipping status updates of any kind), followed the next day by a demanding email from Amazon that I pay them for the item I had received (which I did do).

Even more recently, I ordered an m.2 SSD. While placing the order, I opted for the "green" option to get a little money back by not rushing them. Everything was fine with the order until the next day, when I got an email saying the charge to my (Amazon) card was declined. I checked the card, which still had $8,100 of credit, and I had just received and paid the ($1,900) bill the day before. I called Amazon (and reached a person!) -- the guy in the foreign call center had an accent so think that I had trouble understanding him, but he insisted that the issue was MY fault three times before I got him to consider that maybe it wasn't. He offered to try charging the order again, and it went through. I checked the order status while still on the call, and the "green" option was no longer there, so I cancelled the order and tried re-placing it, but there was no longer any "green" option, so I didn't re-place the order.

I think all of this nonsense is a consequence of Amazon deploying AI into their systems across all business functions. The last one was probably an AI trying to maximize their margins by depriving me of the (1%) "green" credit. Hopefully my actions helped "train" the AI that ripping off your customers will reduce your sales revenue.

I know this was a long rant, but at least in my case, Amazon's deployment of AI is going to reduce the amount of money they earn from me.

Hopefully Enshittification is just the dying throes of a megacorp before they implode - otherwise we are all screwed if this becomes the new normal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU

Or any food, or anything that you wear too close to your body that can be health hazzard due unsafe or toxic materials.

The only thing I've noticed is the very big price difference between academic/technical books when bought on Amazon vs a local book store (40+%) in favour of Amazon. Bulk discounts play a part in that I assume.

When the bear is hunting after your your group of friends, you don't have to be the fastest runner, it is sufficient to not be the slowest one.

Often the same sellers or manufacturers will offer the same product with the same price but with cheaper shipping on eBay.

Unless you make your own choice and going deep into the purchasing options you will end up in one of the 3 scenarios

- Product sold and shipped by Amazon

- Product sold by third party but shipped by Amazon

- Product sold and shipped by third party

I have never had a problem with the first category but the other two are always problematic, especially the third. You are on Amazon.de > you can end up buying from the US, UK, or China (so outside of the EU). Not just you will get hit by customs but good luck enforcing the mandatory 14 day return law.

Their return policies are really lenient too. I bought a computer monitor, didn't like it so I sent it back, bought another and liked it even less, sent it back. The third one I liked, all the returns didn't cost me a thing.

Just a few weeks ago, just be accident, I got a refund on a loaf of bread that had been dented, while I was getting service on something else. Nothing is perfect, but their online chat support has resolved any problem I've had, even if it took some effort.

I don't want to sound like an ad although I probably do, but what am I doing right? Do I somehow, instinctually, avoid products that will be trouble? If things were as bad as the comments suggest, I don't think amazon would be still in business. If this is enshittification, more please.

But the real shocker to me is:

> That means shopping anywhere other than Amazon has become substantially more inconvenient.

and

> We’re all still stuck to the platform, but we get less and less value out of it.

I've simply started buying all of my electronics, and other expensive goods from the manufacturer (D2C) or a reputable retailer in the space. My groceries I can order through my supermarket or one of the grocery focused platforms. They all offer simple free or cheap shipping at a convenient time. I think, to some extent, Amazon has helped this push for better/cheaper shipping.

> Break up with Amazon and delete your apps, and you will lose all the media you’ve ever bought from the platform.

Yes... but if you simply stop paying them you will keep them all? I have never bought a movie through Prime but I have some audio books which all work fine despite me no longer paying Audible.

All in all it seems like this guy has come up with some hypothesis of their master plan but the reality is that switching costs are low and Amazon doesn't hold a monopoly in any tangible way.

I also temporarily sign up for Prime when I visit US (usually for a week), but recently, unless I order on Sunday of my arrival and deliver to one of their lockers, "2-day shipping" or even extra paid same-day-shipping won't arrive by Friday to my hotel (last few experiences in Boston, MA).

Due to only "delivered by Amazon" products having delivery-duty-paid option, I avoid some of the risk of new Amazon, but I need to be extra careful when shopping while in the US.

Local shops are scams in my area: expensive, don’t take back items, limited selections, don’t have the right items and have to settle for less, time consuming, bad customer service, can have language requirements for some people at the time of disputes (but not when selling), the reviews of items are not available and a lot of them turn out to be bad, long waiting lines … Your complaints about online shopping remain with local shopping.

The benefits of online shopping for consumers are plenty and evident. The majority of products I bought online that I researched carefully have been solid.

- Pretty much every webstore of size will now list / sell everything, where 99% of the products are not in stock, and needs to be ordered - probably from the vendors in China, or whatever.

- Explosion in independent 3rd party sellers, within those stores. You now have to check that you're explicitly purchasing from the webstore you're visiting, and not some third party they allow to sell through them. Luckily some stores have become better at notifying the buyer that the item is being bought from someone else, and not the store.

- Acceptance of lookalike products.

Basically, it seems like all the stores are competing to be AliExpress and Temu now.

I got a fake product only once, a box with packing peanuts instead of a ZigBee relay. They refunded the cost right away.

Best I can guess someone's ordered two pairs, split one of the pairs across the two boxes, and sent both boxes back for two refunds and they've gone straight back on the shelf.

Now I can't get anything delivered to my house within 2 days or less because I'm punished as a rural customer, but they can sure as hell send me letters every 2 months complaining I haven't touched my Prime Video.

> Cory Doctorow is an activist, science fiction author and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing.

If you have not dealt with digital marketing, this article is structured as an advertorial, present a pain (Amazon practices), then offer a solution/product, with a subtle call to action (CTA) at the end - "subscribe to the left ideology to get rid of the problem"

I am tired of political propaganda masqueraded as information. Ironically, the author doesn't know that he is a product of "enshittification"; but instead of physical products, left ideologies, heavily advertised through social media.

https://www.allsides.com/news-source/guardian

However power is so centralized in the hands of these oligarchs this wont happen on its own. They are currently turning our country into a white Christian nationalist ethno-state to try to preserve their tenuous hold on power.

In the medium term, their adversarial approach to society’s welfare is likely to backfire as we continue to find ourselves increasingly squeezed by the enshittified world these oligarchs have created - and turn to the only real effective tool that we have left: mass strikes. The longer we wait the harder it’s going to be.

Biggest issue is the shipping. The primary reason I had prime was the shipping - and I swear, only a small fraction of packages ship anywhere near the published date.

I found after I canceled Prime, my Amazon spending significantly went down. Sometimes I will add something to the cart, look at the shipping fee, and decide to abandon the cart. Canceling Prime made me realize I was ordering a lot of junk I didn’t need.

At that point I decided the experience of going for a walk when I need something in a pinch was nicer than ordering online, and if I need something obscure, I'll pay for shipping once or twice a year.

Their packaging and delivery quality is one of the worst. But they are still responsive to customer requests, although that is going down the sewer as well. I get often responses that look LLM/chatbot generated and often not answering my question. Or they try something like, sure I'll get you the refund as soon as you place the order again. Then I insist they refund now and so far I always got my money back.

So, basically their advantage for me is their sortiment (but you need to navigate through a lot of fake and garbage products), free returns and quick refund (often even without a return). But this is not a very strong one and I very rarely open their website - the pile of low quality listing is so off-putting that I generally avoid.

It's now a black market where shady companies are trading on the good name of Amazon and selling the same products at lower products but usually from the grey market.

The only one where I have seen it improve a store (in the UK) is Next where they allow other trusted fashion brands to sell through the store.

A book sold and fulfilled by Amazon.

Amazon's online system kept pushing back the delivery date one week at a time, so it couldn't be canceled either online or by the phone drones.

After the second delay I just went to a local bookstore and bought it right there.

When the book from Amazon finally arrived, I took it straight to Whole Foods for a refund.

So honestly, I think we haven’t even gotten close to the rock bottom point where people will actually start cancelling things like Prime. Especially while the competition still won’t sell their goods to “dirty” areas. And then people wonder why Amazon and Walmart are so big.

You have to watch an 2-minute ad in order to unlock the privilege to view the same kind of 2-minute ad. I'm not sure weather to call that absurdism or dystopian, but it's nuts. More importantly, it is friction. It actively stops the customer from doing what amazon (or its advertisers) actually want them to do.

This same thoughtlessness to the impacts of decision making has been inexplicably implemented into Amazon's companies at every level. This is a big problem for Amazon customers, especially. Amazon's insistence on advertising blocks customers from spending money. Every unrelated "sponsored" product in the search results gives that much more opportunity for a buyer to look on a different site. Serving an ad has inexplicably become a higher priority than closing a sale. Look at Amazon's "are you really sure you actually want to buy that" page they are now using to try and upsell customers before letting them check out. To say the least, it is a fundamental change in philosophy from the company who invented single-click checkout and "Buy it Now".

(Another nice thing is that I can buy (some) imported goods (say a Peak Design pouch) directly on my local Amazon site and feel confident they will arrive. Not sure exactly what makes items appear listed on the local store.)