Before you buy anything from Amazon

Discussion Open Forum
21

Amazon is so shit now, because of all the Chinese shit.

The thing is, that Taobao is the best ecommerce app in the world, hands down. For UI, UX, features, recommendations, customer service etc, nothing competes with Taobao.

If you want Chinese stuff, its so much better and easier to buy from Taobao. Also you can easily customize things and usually merchants have awesome customer service.

Amazon feels old and shit compared to Taobao. Taobao is great at say, segmenting branded products from normal cheaper stuff, but Amazon just mixes it together. The whole experience is so shit now and its so hard to find good stuff on Amazon.

If you speak a smidgen of Chinese, and are in Taiwan, there really is no reason to not be buying directly from Taobao

22

If you buy from Amazon you are literally paying American prices for it, and shipping from America for Chinese stuff. At least with Taobao you buy direct without any middlemen.

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23

Yeah and for example, there are some companies that make really funky bath mats. These sellers are directly linked to the factory. So the seller can offer you 20 different size option for the same design and then the option to pay more for custom orders. The factory just quickly makes to order and ships in a couple of days.

There are loads of sellers like that on Taobao and you wouldnt be able to get that service from Alixpress of Amazon. As well as paying loads more.

24

Haha… there used to be organised review sites (which of course made money from hosting that as a platform), you had to be vetted, they’d look at all of your reviews, what you wrote, how you wrote etc. One of the largest battery sellers on Amazon once sent me an email (I was on their list somehow) and they laid out the terms quite clearly. They would read any review you submitted, you had to have a certain review rank etc. and they were crystal clear, if you said something they didn’t like you would not ever get free product again. That’s completely against Amazon TOS, and I suspect many big actual companies (not teens doing FBA after school) were doing that.

So these platforms started becoming huge… and because people had to write the disclaimer in their review “I received this product in exchange for…” that phrase started to explode on Amazon to the point where many products had 90% of their reviews included it… and it was just growing exponentially - and I mean exponentially… Amazon did something to shut it down. I can’t remember what it was because it wasn’t mainstream media. They must have deleted tens of millions of reviews quietly. But what happened was they changed the rules so these sites that were organising the free stuff for people in exchange for reviews could no longer operate that way. So it pushed (from what I could see) what was happening underground. Most people don’t write reviews, so to get 20 reviews would take forever, but once you cross a certain threshold of reviews, then people will organically review your product.

My favourite product was the Teflon Umbrella (I’m sure they never licensed the brand name). It retailed for $25 or so (so maybe $5 to make) and came with a lifetime free replacement guarantee. You can imagine that sold well, but probably they never honoured that replacement.

So there were websites like ‘deals of the day’ which you could list (for a price) your giveaway for reviews, and people could sign up and grab them at 100% or 90% discount or whatever. If you clicked on reviewer names, you’d see people writing 20+ reviews every day… some of them in obscene detail, with photos, videos etc. They really wanted their free stuff!

I think perhaps what happened is people figured a way around it all (some sellers literally lost all their reviews) - say, doing something like offering a charge-back on your purchase once you leave the review, coupons etc., giving away product but not ‘requiring’ a review to be left (which of course was the expectation that it would).

I haven’t followed FBA for years, so I’m not sure where its at, but there’s too much money on the table and too many greedy people for them to not constantly be figuring ways around it. And since Amazon has a huge vested interest, its in their interest to keep the game going, but under the table so joe public doesn’t ever know what is really going on.

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25

Amazon just banned thousands of Chinese merchants for bad practices.

26

yes. so, to reiterate. sell your soul to the enemy.

pass.

to clarify: fuck Amazon. not THE Amazon, just the planet degrading company.

27

that should be placed into dictionaries next to irony.

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28

These are private Chinese companies right? They don’t belong to the Chinese government. I guess they pay tax on China, but as do pretty much every western company

29

The government only gets involved when the company achieves a certain scale. Otherwise they are private companies.

30

Why percentage of Chinese sellers is decreasing

31

Smaller private Chinese companies are the ones most fucked by both the government and the tariffs. In China they are squeezed by State owned companies that can do what they want, and overseas they are bearing the brunt of global politic shifts.

32

good reason to boycott no?

I agree the little guys get screwed. that’s the same globally. but even “small” guys trickle money back to the war threats that oppress other countries. still, hard pass!

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33

But say, you buy a sweater from GAP, which is made in Indonesia

GAP will pay more in taxes to the Chinese government than a small manufacturer. To be consistent shouldn’t you avoid all companies paying tax in China

34

Also it’s impossible, because China’s market is HUGE and also Taiwan is close to China. In fact China is Taiwan’s biggest trading partner.

Unless you want to go completely off grid and live like the 1200s. I highly recommend moving to a remote island somewhere up north, far away from China.

If you live in Taiwan a good portion of your money will go to China. There’s no way around it.

This also means having any job too, because they will deal with China no matter what. Unless you’re in the Taiwan military.

35

yes, correct. which understandably can be hard to figure out. so it’s good to have discussions knowing who is where. not just taxes though, big companies are far more problematic as far as dealing with ccp than simple taxes.

amazon just happens to be a shyte company regardless of china sellers. hence pass on Amazon :slight_smile:

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36

doesn’t mean people should give up and not try. life isn’t black or white. 20% reduction on funding missiles pointed at us is great. if one expects 100% on everything all the time, theyw I’ll be quite disappointed in life.

37

I’m a big fan of not supporting the CCP to the best of my ability too. Just the other day I was buying some drawing materials. The store brand stuff seemed pretty solid and was about 1/4 the cost of the two available (well-known for being quality) German brands. I saw “made in China” on the store brand, immediately picked up the German brands to make sure they were actually made in Germany, and didn’t hesitate to spend the extra money. I can spend ten dollars more now or who knows what price we’ll pay in the future. Buying more expensive, non CCP stuff also comes with the natural consequence of it costing more, which causes one to rethink the whole concept of buying stuff just cuz you can.

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38

exactly. that’s great to do. when people can, do it. I think we need a shift in our thinking as to priorities. it is pretty easy to buy not made in china as far as the label goes. it’s often just an excuse when people say it’s hard. we all agree and know better that some ingredients are likely passing through chinas hands, but it’s a bare minimum effort that everyone is capable of should they care about such problems :slight_smile:

Never really understood the Taiwan situation of loving and promoting our demise to be honest. psychology studies would have a great time here.

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39

So I did an experiment…
I bought the same items from 4 different platforms:

  • Ruten
  • Shopee
  • Taobao
  • Amazon

Here are the results:

Best Price (including shipping) = Amazon
Best Shipping Speed = Amazon
Best Variety of Items = Ruten

Details:
I ordered school classroom reward supplies to get ready for the coming school year. This included fun character erasers, pens, multicolor pens, pencil toppers, small game toys, small generic lego kits, and much more. I was careful to select the exact same items and quantity of items on all 4 platforms. All 4 orders were made on the same day.

:one: Ruten:
Ruten had the most variety on offer. This is most likely due to many sellers being drop shippers. There is one seller who I buy from often. She is fantastic. All I have to do is send her a list of the things I want and she will do all the leg work for me. She works 24-7 too. Easy to get a hold of and very responsive. It was simple to just show her pictures of what I wanted and within 30 minutes, I had a quote. I can also usually negotiate the price with her. The other platforms did not have this advantage.

Shipping comes from China and is sent via 7-11’s shipping service if the package is small enough. If it is too heavy or too large, then shipping comes from SF Express (cue scary violin screech). This order was too heavy to ship via 7-11, so I had to go with SF Express. What is nice is that my contact handles all of the logistics and contact with SF Express.

The items were delivered 10 days from ordering.
Payment was made by bank transfer. Because I was going through a Ruten seller who was creating an order for me, the system would not allow for a credit card purchase. The option was either COD or Bank Transfer. I would usually opt for COD out of caution, but I know this seller and trust her. So I was ok with doing a bank transfer. There were no customs charges.

:two: Shopee:
Shopee had decent selections, but prices were a bit higher than what I got on Ruten. I had to order from multiple shops as not one single shop had everything I needed. This means there were multiple shipping charges and items were coming from multiple locations.

It took 12 days to get everything I ordered. Some of it came from China, other things were delivered faster within Taiwan. There was some slight hassle with EZWay to get the items from China, but nothing too difficult. I did have to pay a customs fee once the items arrived in Taiwan. It was paid directly to the delivery person in cash.
Payment for the order was by credit card.

:three: Taobao:
Similar to the Shopee experience, except more difficult to communicate with sellers. Prices looked good upfront, but after checking out, I was hit with ridiculous service charges and shipping fees from multiple sellers.

The items have still not arrived and it has been 18 days since I made the order. The items moved around China to finally all meet up in one distriution hub. That is where they were supposed to bundle everything together to ship to Taiwan. Contacting them to find out what is causing the delay has been a nightmare. They need all sorts of ID verification and getting it to them has been a pain in the ass.

:four: Amazon: :1st_place_medal::trophy::star:
Amazon did not have as wide of a selection of items as the rest, but the quality was better. I did have to do all the leg work sifting through drop shippers and looking for “sold by Amazon” items. I only purchased items sold by Amazon. The cost, surprisingly, was lower than all of the other platforms. This is because all items had free shipping since the order was over 60 USD. This made a HUGE difference. I also took advantage of Prime Day sales. Also, Amazon takes care of customs fees upfront and refunds it within 30 days if customs doesn’t charge anything. I have always gotten my Amazon customs fee back.

The items I ordered arrived 5 days after ordering them. Just FIVE days! They were shipped from the USA. By far, shipping from Amazon was the fastest and least amount of trouble.
Payment for the order was made by credit card.

All in all, Amazon proved to be the best option for speed and cost.
Ruten was best for variety / availability and has the option for COD, which is a good thing.
Shopee was meh…ok. Not bad, but not stellar either.
Taobao has been hell. I will never order through Taobao again. :-1::poop::rage:

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40

Just updating my post here, just got an unsolicited message on FaceBook, yeah loads of people are still gaming Amazon reviews:

Hi, I think this might be helpful. We have a fine elite group of reviewers ( over 300 from 1K top reviewers). Our rates are the lowest you’ll find + We provide a full guarantee for the amount of the reviews requested - or your money back! Our team has over 3 years of amazon accounts managing experience. Feel free to contact us Or simply fill the seller sign in form in the pinned post: If for some reason you believe our service is against TOS or illegal you can find all the info need here on amazon…

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