Looks like I’m spoiled for choice. Temu has exactly the same for 11.29. Not that I’d be purchasing from either place; it’s just another example of Amazon’s enshittification.
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I hate to say it, but I almost appreciate the honesty that comes from multiple different alphabet soup brands selling the exact same item often with the exact same photos. Additionally, unbranded items aren’t always poor quality.
I’ve actually got some unbranded Christmas light strings I bought because I just wanted to put some lights on some columns at my wedding and wanted to spend less than $100 doing so, and those light strings have outlasted every commercial Christmas light string I’ve purchased. Heck I have a couple of those strings which have been on for 3+ years straight.
Most unbranded items are made by factories that do OEM and ODM work for actual brands that we’ve all heard of, so they know how to make quality products and they can get more ongoing orders if they make products that are worth restocking. Sometimes you get burned but far more often than not I end up with something that’s relatively decent quality and fullfills the need I have for the item
I agree with the quality aspect. We got some solar lights for the garden that are brighter and last longer than those you buy in local stores for a much higher price. That said, I prefer to buy such no-brand items from Ali Express, which charges a third or half the price Amazon does for the same item.
This far from a solution but the thing I do is do a quick search for it on a search engine and look for websites makes a list of the best ones you can buy at the moment. Here’s an example: I search for “best hiking shoes for national parks” and many outdoor-focused gear websites will recommend shoes from brands like Columbia and Merrell.
That’s a sure fire way to land on AI generated affiliate sites that just rank items by popularity or their royalty %
Those are all just affiliate spam links, often AI made, generated to get people to spend the most money so they get the best kickbacks.
Man it’s fallen off a cliff. Many years ago I bought a knockoff Chinese messenger bag from Amazon. It’s fantastic, great materials, good quality zipper, it’s held up to daily use for years and looks even better than when I got it (leather developed a nice patina).
So, I needed another bag, went looking for the same brand as mine. No longer there, but there are 75 identical looking but weirdly named brands instead. I found one that looked as similar as I could to my old bag, and this one is an utter piece of shit. I mean, I’ll use it, it’s a duffle bag so not as much use as the messenger bag, but the difference is stark. Stiff, cheap cloth, leather sure, but probably harvested entirely from cow buttholes, zippers look brass, but one zip and the color wore off…
Everything, even purchased goods have enshittified. Everything looks cool but just absolutely sucks.
leather sure, but probably harvested entirely from cow buttholes
lmao
I wonder what enables this business model to survive? 🤔
A market of lemons
People being afraid of AliExpress
Freedom To Choose
Honestly, I stopped buying on Amazon 3 years ago. Apart from an enshittified experience I don’t want to pay for Jeff Bezos next Helicopter. I go to the store or buy on alternative web sites which are 10€ more expensive, but fuck Jeff.
ebay. You get pretty much the same offerings but at least on ebay the people selling actually care about looking good since negative reviews really tank your scores and those actually matter.
Just a week ago I got victim of Amazon dropshipping on eBay. The product was delivered by and from Amazon, but the ebay seller used a weird tracking service so it isn’t too obvious. He put the 5€ difference directly into his pocket. I complained to eBay, but they decided “based on automation and the use of artificial intelligence”, that no rules were broken. So be careful with using eBay as an alternative. Negative reviews can be more or less easily removed on eBay, better give a neutral review in these cases.
Good call.
I will say, I do go out of my way to buy from local spots. I’ve thought about trying to negotiate with some Local Game Store types about prices. I want to buy from LGS but if the price is twice that of Amazon I do find it challenging, if it was like 50% up from Amazon I’d do it, but double is a bit too big of a difference to me in some cases.
Especially if it’s just one extra trader in between who drives the price. Jeff Bezos is evil, but let’s not act like local electronic stores are charity. In the end it’s all produced in China…
Negative reviews are not easily removed on eBay. My husband has been a seller for years now. People will complain about the wildest shit that was clearly addressed in the listing, then you spend 2 hours on the phone with eBay, and likely they will keep the review.
On Amazon, on the other hand, vendors will personally reach out to you if you give anything less than 5 stars and basically “work” with you u til you change your rating (giving you free shit). A lot of people end up changing their review.
vendors will personally reach out to you if you give anything less than 5 stars and basically “work” with you u til you change your rating (giving you free shit)
Not the one I had a problem with. They sold me a bunch of reman hard drives that were listed as new. When I returned them and gave them a shitty review about how they lied they tried to bribe me with 1 used drive to take it down. I was like, “no, give me what I actually ordered or fuck off” They fucked off. Amazon also didn’t do shit to them for there fraudulent listings as far as I can tell.
Their b2c stuff isn’t what’s making bezos rich. It’s AWS, which is difficult to avoid as it runs over half of the internet. But I get the sentiment.
Maybe people will stop using Amazon?
Nahhhh
Amazon’s going through the same enshitification cycle as Sears and JC Penny did a decade ago.
It’s not a question of “Will people stop using Amazon?” but “Will people start using <X>” where X is better than Amazon. Solve for X.
Shop local if you can, avoid Amazon.
For me, local is improving, but slowly. Living in Ireland, the local market is, well, insular. Until recently, local shops faced very little competition, so their prices were exorbitant and customer service non-existent. This attitude is slowly changing, and my shopping habits are shifting to local, so hopefully in time I’ll stop buying from Amazon, Ali Express, and the likes.
I mean, if you’ve got an REI in your neighborhood, that can be handy. But even they still get their merch from somewhere that isn’t the storefront or even the city. There really isn’t a “buy local” option for textiles in a material sense, unless you really know where to look.
Shop AliExpress if you can, avoid dropshippers and petit bourgeois
Are you looking for something which can actually take a beating? I have bought like four of these cheaper bags on Amazon and they all fall apart in a year or two. And before then they all have shitty strap adjustments which slowly slip over time.
I’d strongly suggest getting something like a chrome or timbuk2 bag which will be like 5x more expensive up front but will actually last decades instead of years. I have been dailying the OG chrome citizen messenger bag for five years now and it’s barely broken in.
Timbuk2 isn’t as good as they used to be. If you can find a used one it’s worth it, I’ve had mine for like twenty years, but I wouldn’t gamble on one made in the last five years. (They closed all their physical stores and cut costs on manufacturing by moving offshore)
I second this. I am currently still using the waxed canvas bag from the distilled collection and all I’ve had to do is replace the strap from wear. Its seen rain, snow, and shitloads of abuse that would cause these cheaper bags to just disintegrate. Its old as shit by now but aside from being well worn - is still perfectly functional.
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
GNU Terry Pratchett
I agree. I have several timbuk2 bags and the only one with significant damage is the pet carrier that my cat clawed the shit out of. The company repaired it for like $10 to cover the shipping
Depending on where in the world you are:
There is a resale store called Buffalo Exchange with a bunch of locations who always has the best messenger bags IMO. I’ve purchased several vintage messengers from them for carrying art supplies.
My favorite is a rigid leather satchel the size of a briefcase. Its new enough to have a laptop pocket, but old enough where the laptop would be expected to be gigantic. I use that slot for canvasses. Then it leaves the main pocket open for my mini-easel and brushes. External pockets act to replace my purse on days I carry it. All genes covered with a giant leather flap which locks closed. V protec.
Thanks! That’s actually what I’d be looking for. I’ll check whether they deliver hassle-free to Ireland. Relatively few speciality stores do.
Amazon is just a drop shipping marketplace where everything comes direct from the exact same warehouse in China.
Hey now. China’s been churning out much higher quality merch of late. And the American Tech Giants have been increasingly wrapped up in US trade war politics. So a lot of this shit now comes from the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh.
How do they drop ship from China in 2 days?
Because Amazon pushes sellers to use Amazon warehouses and shipping their product in advance
…so they’re not drop shipping the product to the customers.
Easy, they don’t.
Not everything on Amazon ships in two days. In the picture, the dates vary quite a bit.
One of the many reasons I canceled my prime subscription is a lot of stuff was not coming in 2 days.
Exactly. Once you know about “white box” goods and the robust Chinese manufacturing chains that support it, you can’t unsee it.
What blows my mind is that Amazon is just accelerating this, and at times, embracing it with their own brand. They’ve gone from being a whole-ass shopping mall to end-of-days-K-Mart in just a few years.
literally slop 🤣
How is this enshitification? You can go into a physical store and find the same from one store to another. I think this is just your bias speaking.
At least with a brick and mortar store you actually know what you’re getting*
*to a degree. You still won’t know how well it will actually hold up in the real world - but you can at least get an idea of it’s construction (Materials/stitching and so on) that you don’t/can’t get via an online shop (especially with all the bogus reviews nowadays)
But you know that capitalism is so good because the free market ensures that there’s so much variety and choice in quality and innovation.
What we have isn’t even capitalism. The supposed free market doesn’t exist when the big players pocket the regulators to use as a weapon against smaller businesses and secure their own market positioning.
Incidentally, this is typically the end result of capitalism if you don’t reign in and break up these companies.
There are two factors necessary for a truly free market that prevent any capitalist system from actually being a free market. They are:
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Consumers need to have perfect information about the products and the companies that make and/or sell them - in other words, companies must not be able to hide their sins.
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There needs to be zero friction for new entrants into the marketplace, whether that is from costs to start up a business, or anti-competitive behavior from other companies with money to throw around.
It is impossible to achieve either of these in the real world.
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They don’t need to pocket the regulators.
They just need to buy up or out-price the competition into oblivion.
These practices are exactly the kinds of behaviors that regulators should prevent.
When a business gets huge it shouldn’t be allowed to buy up all of its competition. Regulatory authorities should block these acquisitions. For example, Sprint should never have been sold because it concentrated power even further and gives customers less choice.
It’s not simple price competition either. A company like Walmart can afford to sell products at a loss to drive other businesses out on purpose and then jack up the prices when they’re the only game in town. Dollar General has been accused of strategically placing stores to block businesses from making a profit.
Sprint is an interesting example because I believe regulators did block previous merger attempts on exactly those grounds.
It’s yet another case subject to the whims of whatever administration is in charge, and we’re stuck with the fallout
I know. It’s how what China and the Soviets had wasn’t communism. A relatively small group of people climb up top and ruin everything, as they always have.
It’s like we have a centrally planned economy but dumber.
I don’t know what the solution is.
The first thing I would do if I had a magic wand and could just change reality to see what happens, would be to get rid of Citizens United and whatever they called that decision that said money=speech. That’s the kind of thing that could actually happen without requiring wholesale societal change. Add in some strong campaign finance laws and maybe you could get some politicians who aren’t putting themselves up for auction to the highest bidder.
What we have is exactly capitalism. A “winner-takes-it-all” system breeds oligopoly, and oligopoly breeds corruption.
the big players pocket the regulators
That’s the entire point of capitalism, it’s how it’s always been, and it’s how it will always be. It’s class analysis: the capital owners have the media, the political power, and the repressive force of the state apparatus behind them.
It used to work. When something no longer sold, manufacturers would diversify. Now they force you to still buy the same product with the help of politicians and bribes.
If you’re in canada just go on the shop app. Forget this Amazon bullshit. Buy local.
Or hit up the thrift stores. Eventually you’ll find something. I have to go because it’s the best place to buy fat man clothes.
Shopify is American
The app itself just collects retail storefronts into one tool so you don’t need an app for each store.
I always love the nonsensical order of letters that these companies use.
There’s a reason for them! I can’t find the original video I saw about it, but this one explains it pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UrqlMfwUC4&t=192
I also like how sarcastic this person sounds (at least to me) during their sponsor segment.
You’re probably thinking of the HAI video.
That seems very likely. I guess my YouTube search skills aren’t what I thought they were. Thank you.
My favourite one so far is “Hoement”
“CTIRCHIU” sounds like an eldritch god
CTIRCHIU is definitely the most premium brand judging by that price, truly a name you can trust
I’m pretty sure CTIRCHIU is a Lovecraftian monster.
What you mean? HAFSBEVCZ is a totally established, reputable brand.
Looks more like a randomly generated password.
My favourite of these company names is still BOIFUN who obviously sell DVD players, baby monitors and door bells.
The one that really stuck with me was COCKFAIS
FOCMKEAS (19mm reamer) SCHNITPWR (12V power supply)
It’s because of the US patent and trademark office. Not many people are competing with those who slam their heads on the keyboard for their brand names.
Amazon required a US trademarked brand name after the first bout of “el cheapo boot leg” products hit the news cycle (the pajamas on fire and hair curlers that would kill you), so we had these alphabet soup brand names ever since.
I read that it’s to avoid internal competition.
A Chinese company manufactures a product (or parts of it) for a Western brand with high quality control standards.
Half the production output meets the standard and is sold under the Western brand name for a higher price.
The other half is sold much cheaper, with a brand name that sounds unappealing to Western customers but can still be sold to Asian markets or people who don’t care and only look at the price.
So the name sounds bad on purpose to steer buyers who care about the name towards the more expensive brand with a higher profit margin.Amazon does not require a brand but having a brand allows the seller better access into amazing seller’s tools.
Amazing incentivizes this shit and does not give a fuck about it. They could be easily detecting this using LLMs but they don’t because they only care so it profits.
Hoement sounds like a word, at least. A… Hoe moment?
I was thinking it was a movement for sex worker rights, or something
I don’t care what the Hoe meant, she’s still a hoe.
She’s having a hoement, letter.
„went to the bar last night with my girls and met this guy. a few hours later i was having a hoement with him in the bathroom.“
