Amazon sellers watch as inventory vanishes into pending-order purgatory Traders on Amazon's UK marketplace say a wave of "abnormal" orders stuck in pending status is tying up their inventory and preventing legitimate customers from buying the affected items. Vendors on Amazon's Seller Central forums report unusually high numbers of pending orders in their accounts, often involving products priced at …
Just the latest in an ever growing economic attack from the Chinese I would suspect. Their wares have taken over on Amazon with wildly varying degrees of quality and fake reviews to match. This is hardly surprising and actually ingenious, the only actual surprise is that they've not done it before.
Xi being in the US when this story surfaces might be somewhat of an exhibition of soft power too.
What I find interesting is that my inbox has started to be flooded with "Complete your order", "Your cart is waiting", "Click to complete payment" spam. All sent 'On behalf of', so quite persistent and difficult to filter, and all from (ostensibly) small companies.
I hadn't assumed anything more substantial than just another spam technique, but now I'm wondering if it's linked to this. Credible email addresses being farmed and these then being used to place thousands of orders with vendors which are then not completed.
I'm not sure about vibe coding being involved, but I wouldn't be surprised if LLM's are involved in some way. And I also wouldn't be surprised to see many more "weird" things happen to retailers and the supply chain in general as more people, businesses and governments experiment with LLM's. Unfortunately, I don't think tin foil hats are going to protect us.
It's more realistic that Amazon being flooded with junk is attributable to consumer demand for impossibly-cheap junk (see Temu), and the platform having no incentive for quality control as long as they still get their cut.
It's also not entirely based around buyer ignorance or unrealistic demands when a POOYONPOPI-"brand" product for $20 is made by the same exact factory as the $100 "well-known" Bosch equivalent and sometimes even works better. Enshittification is coming after everything, after all. No company truly cares about quality or longevity anymore as long as they can offload their con onto some sucker, meet quarterly goals and move on to the next target.
"It's more realistic that Amazon being flooded with junk is attributable to consumer demand for impossibly-cheap junk"
While I agree in principle, the point here is that this has happened suddenly and to a degree far beyond normal operating parameters. Enshittification is gradual and consistent, it doesn't generally strike overnight.
And yes I absolutely agree that when {UNNAMED_BRAND} can produce products with a better price/performance ratio than {NAMED_BRAND}, it will be the named brand that ultimately has to innovate or go under. This is good news for end consumers in the short term, until the whole world has become used to buying barely tolerable products for a cheap price and there is nowhere else to go.
The only problem with that is that in the majority of cases, the cheap 'un-named brand" product is all to frequently a knock-off/copy of the named brand product, which has been designed and productionised at great cost by the named brand. The 'un-named' brand copies it, thereby avoiding all the development and associated costs, so can sell basically the same thing at a fraction of the cost. The copycat 'un-named' brands are little more than IP thieves.
If the named-brands go under, the un-named brand is left without new future products to copy at little cost. They then either have to pay for developing new products themselves, or just carry on with the increasing outdated ones. Either way, it will be the consumers who will suffer - they either end up with no new and improved products, or they get new improved products, but they will cost nearly as much as they would have done from the now-defunct named-brand but will in all probability be of poorer quality.
Because when I service my {NAMED_BRND} Oven - all parts inside come from China; in order to inrease {NAMED_BRAND} profits. The CPU on the oven controller ends with "CN", the relais are HF (Hong-Fa). The whole conrtoller is sold for 130 as spare - the parts cost around 10.
And when my {NAMED_BRAND} fridge started making noises after 3 years, the fan assembly was not available any more = not sold by {NAMED_BAND}. Now after 9 years, the fan broke down - and I was able to buy the exact same fan that {NAMED_BRAND} sold for 117 when it still was available, for 24 on Aliexpress. The fan product code is identical, the specs (12V, 144rpm, CCW, made in China), and the connector plug. It fitted perfectly - and now my fridge is working again.
Bascially, {NAMED_BRAND} is milking consumers - selling overpriced crap. My next kitchen appliances will be from LG, or others which sell for less than half of {NAMED_BRND}. And if it breaks, I don't need to repair the expensive item - just buy a new one.
PS: There is a thread on reddit that a {NAMED_BRAND} oven bought on Amazon, when unpacked turned out be a identical features LG brand instead. In fact, I notice Aldi is selling an LG with identical looks and control knobs as my {NAMED_BRAND}. This is logical - after {NAMED_BRAND} outsource parts production to China - now they outsource it all. To add to the insult, (user manual) the LG model has a little tray under the door where condensation collects - my {NAMED_BRAND} does not have this; and I put a kitchen paper towel there so the condensation does not get into the wood drawer below.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame the Chinese- but post-COVID price scalpers (like Michelle Mone and her dodgy PPE), possibly!
This is the sort of thing that might have caused the bizarre shortage of "eclipse glasses" leading up to the UK/Western Europe Solar Eclipse this year, for example.
Naturally, prices skyrocketed for anyone able to sell them, at the expense of the enjoyment of millions of children and adults. Many of whom will have paid 100x the usual price for the tat that arrived a day too late and decades too early for the next time they are needed..
It could be one or more start-ups testing agent-based software and using Amazon as a crash test dummy. They want to see if they work, but pull back from completion so they don't have to pay.
Or maybe it is green activists targeting the consumer economy with what amounts to a DDoS attack on small businesses.
The hard bit is actually telling someone senior enough about it, as most companies are now firewalled by bots.
If you are selling items via your main competitor's marketplace, expect issues.
If Amazon just received a couple of containers of widgets, the widgets you have posted for sale with Amazon might not show up in searches from time to time. It would be easy for them to manipulate searches and still hang on to some plausible deniability if they were taken to task. The odds favoring the house is how Las Vegas keeps the lights on. People still win, but the house wins more often. How often are you doing test searches for your own items?
I like supporting local traders, but our local shops have increasingly limited ranges, don't deliver and have never sold most of the stuff I buy, from vegan snack bars to medical equipment to computer gear. I don't have Prime but seem to get everything within 24 or 48 hours using the free post option. The vast majority of stuff on sale both in shops and on Amazon is made in China and has been for years. Nobody locally has any interest in making it, aside for artisan versions for rich people at prices that would make Apple blush. I have a number of preferred third party sellers that I buy stuff from regularly. Customer service/delivery is no worse than anywhere else. I don't have a car, so getting stuff delivered is brilliant, saving me lots of time and money. Particularly now that we have two seasons - very wet and very hot. I can get on with work whilst Amazon do the heavy lifting. And the fewer sites you type your card details into, the better, in terms of risk.
That said, other sites are better for some things. Ebay for collectables, obscure items, spare parts or anything sourced from abroad. Abe or ebay for books. Local shops are great for basic food shopping and everyday items that they know they will always have buyers for.
"going to the shops gets my steps in"
Being organized helps. I keeps lists of things I need on my phone so when I'm out, I make the time to visit shops to get the things I need. It IS hard to do that for everything I buy, but shopping online isn't my default option. I don't think stores are keeping up with the changing shopping patterns. Fresh, bulky and heavy items are easier to buy locally. I can order anything hardware from my local hardware store and have it within a week with no shipping charges. The last time I looked, they had around 8-9 phone book sized catalogs of things they could get. When I need a gasket set for the bathroom tap, ordering online isn't helpful. I need the bloody thing fixed today. (got spares since I learned a lesson last time).
I've got a project for the home solar heating and I could get some of the electronics from Amazon, but I shop online at a specialist electronics supplier. That supplier has been really good, they keep things in stock and they aren't concentrating on only the most popular items so there are multiple choices even is some might not move that quickly for them. I really need the flippin' Chip Select option on the temp modules so I can have a bunch of them on one bus. That's not the most popular or cheapest module, but it will do what I need it to do.
full of drop shipped chinese crap
Of the four extension I run in Brave, two are concerned with Amazon. One blocks "Sponsored" links (which are never, ever tightly related to what you searched before except by category [1]) and the other is called "Knockoff". It blocks blatant knockoffs, the random-lettered Chinese dropshippers and also implements a vendor/supplier location & reliability check.
It filters out a *lot* of crap. I had to look at Amazon on my work laptop (where I don't use Chrome or Brave) and I'd forgotten how much sheer crap Amazon throws at you.
[1] "Did he search for a fridge? Yes? Show him sponsored links for ovens because he's definitely looking for white goods!"
There's any third party sellers left. I work at Amazon and it is well known they're producing more stuff under their own brands to undercut and force out the third parties who made their platform popular. You know, "just business".
I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually do it to the Chinese but there's so much tat it'll be a massive undertaking!
" isn't it a bit tricky to piss off the country that makes your stuff by dropping that country's brands that make your stuff from your marketplace?"
This is why Reverb has gained traction and I just spotted another marketplace (Mercari?) that I hadn't seen before. Finally some options.
if you dig down through all the shit, you eventually get to the factory and can talk to the people who make the stuff. It's pretty useful and delivery is always on time even though it's weeks/months away.
The buy stuff off a box shifter, who bought the stuff from another box shifter, who bought the stuff from another box shifter, is gone from my life.
Mind you AliExpress: Just say no.
My main gripe with Amazon is delivery. You waste days because they say "Friday" and the stuff will appear any day other than Friday.
"You waste days because they say "Friday" and the stuff will appear any day other than Friday."
The cheap delivery companies are a problem too. I bought some obsolete chips from a seller on eBay. He made the mistake of sending them across the US using FedEx "smartepost". If Cook's was still in business, they'd be proud of the routing, but nobody else. The seller and I are seeing if we can make any money on the prediction markets on when I might get the chips. I have to believe that FedEx is losing their ass on this. It's gets close to my house and then gets sent off to a depot hundreds of miles away, gets returned to a main service/sorting center to be sent off in the wrong direction again. They've still got a little time to get the package to Boca Chica and get it on Starship flight 14 if they hustle.
It's my belief that history is a wheel. "Inconsistency is my very essence" -says Amazon- "Rise up on my spokes if you like, but don't complain when you are cast back down into the depths. Good times pass away, but then so do the bad. Mutability is our tragedy, but it is also our hope. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away".
