Just a point with prime. You can almost always find whatever you want cheaper somewhere else.
I have noticed this. I'm in the habit of doing a general web search for a product to see if it's available elsewhere for less. Usually, it is.
I still order from amazon though because it comes next day...
I love the reviews on Amazon, they're very handy. Otherwise I shop by price, if I can save $1 by waiting a week I usually will. Otherwise I can usually find what I need locally if I'm in a hurry.
I love the reviews on Amazon
You might like to install a browser extension from
ReviewMeta which helps to identify fake reviews.
At one time Amazon allowed kind of paid-for reviews (where the payment was essentially the product for free) and insisted that the review noted that it was based on free kit. Easy to skip those reviews, or at least take into account the genesis, but apparently some reviewers took the piss and obfuscated the required statement in various ways so it wasn't obvious. Amazon's response was to ban solicited reviews completely.
Trouble is, now the transactions are done off-Amazon and there is no indication that a review has been bought (except that it is probably a 5-star). You have no idea which reviews are pukka and which are dodgy (sometimes all of them). That website uses analytics to try and figure it out.
I find it's pretty easy to identify the fake reviews. I'm sure a few clever ones manage to sneak by but for the most part I can tell. For one thing any review that doesn't list any negative factors is automatically suspect, and some just read like advertisements. I tend to pay the most attention to the 3-4 star reviews, the highest rate of fake ones are in 5 stars and a lot of the 1 star reviews are people who bought the wrong item, don't know how to use it, or are griping about problems they had with the transaction.
Low hanging fruit. The site mentioned can turn up some surprising things because it does stuff like look at what other products groups of reviewers have reviewed together. The way these things work, that's a bigger indicator than the rating given, but it's not one a viewer can normally find.
I go Amazon as well just to look at the reviews and also Trustpilot.
What I find I have to do is to look at the reviewer's profile because of the way they speak of a product and I get suspicious and quite a few of them never left a review before.
I look for things like negative feedback and honesty in what you would expect to find.
Good thing is most of the time you get some grumpy person on there leaving a one star review to know what the worst case might be and what can go wrong with it.
Yeah I always read the one star reviews first. For example the toaster my wife made me buy.
Good reviews: 500x amazing toaster. Wow just looks great in the kitchen
Bad review (just one): this thing is stupid: two handles to put the toast down and only one eject button for both sides and you have to put the right two slices in first because the left handles don’t work unless the right are down.
That toaster was a pile of shite. Horrid to use.
A lot of the one star reviews are basically just idiots but they’re easy to filter out.
“You work slowly because Hans-Peter is having trouble with the computer. He can’t place the cursor where he wants it, using the mouse. His cursor chases nervously around its target. . . . You minimize the window, which Hans-Peter maximized to be too large to handle.” There is significance in the slowness, in the mistakes, even in the wrongness of the computer’s maddening interface, which is meant to be elided in the supposedly frictionless transmission of digital information. These are the moments in which the system is briefly subverted
That reminds me of a change to mouse acceleration in Windows XP that affected certain games. It is adjustable with the X and Y curves registry keys but there is a good tool "Mark C mouse fix" for that. With that change the Y axis becomes slower than the X axis making it difficult to aim.
Today when I was out someone spoke to me.
He was trying to post a picture using "an Instagram app" on their phone.
He said it was complicated.
I can believe that when they make things so difficult through over simplification.
I got an letter from Amazon today and I guessed what might be in there.
Amazon Prime oh and they give a card as well.
See attachment.
Once you trail comes to and end, it will automatically converter to a paid membership
They might be hoping I'll get stuck in or forget.
It says at the bottom in the small writing:
Amazon Prime automatically renews at £7.99 per mounth or, if select, £79 per year.
I suppose isn't bad £79 a year saving £15.98 but why is it in the small the print?
If they want give me a bargain price for a year I'd expect the lowest price to be shown as well in the big print.
Why? Because they have a lot of marketing research to tell them what EVERY space in the email should contain for maximum effect in accord with local law. You think they want to tell you the price? You think they want to tell you the REAL PRICE?
Oh those pesky consumer laws.
So they want me to forget about the real price and forgive them afterwards for forgetting.
So I just read that NY officials
offered to condemn whatever properties that Amazon might so desire- under eminent domain. Which is legal now here in the US, even when no public use is contemplated, under the theory that more money=good.
Total amount of tax concessions offered to them - $3 BILLION USD.
Thats truly evil.
The picture was part of the pitch. The building pictured (with the NY EDCs added text) is part of the new WTC complex!
So I just read that NY officials offered to condemn whatever properties that Amazon might so desire- under eminent domain. Which is legal now here in the US, even when no public use is contemplated, under the theory that more money=good.
Total amount of tax concessions offered to them - $3 BILLION USD.
Thats truly evil.
Yea, the government officials in NY should be ashamed.
Somebody with a bunch of money should condemn a bunch of elected official's homes to make a point.
This is something you'd think the right would be all over, individual property rights. Personally I think eminent domain should be abolished outside of very specific circumstances. It should absolutely have to be public infrastructure like roads or rails, never a private interest.
The picture was part of the pitch. The building pictured (with the NY EDCs added text) is part of the new WTC complex!
"Priming us to never leave the house"?
Was that a subversive graphics designer who put that slogan into the photo, or someone who didn't realize that this was
not Amazon's own pitch?
I've actually had Amazon prime for 4 years. I abused the crap out of the prime shipping to make it worth it. I ordered a bunch of stuff every week for my hobbies, watched movies on prime and almost never used the music as you can find all that on youtube anyway.
Sometimes you find something cheaper elsewhere but if you add the shipping its about the same cost and slower arrival.
For me it all worked out great product replacement policy etc. one day i needed themed clothing for a wedding and i had to 1 day ship it because no one told me the got dang theme until it was way too fkn late... lol
But lately amazon lost my trust when they blamed me for getting a "free product for reviews" when in reality i got standard product replacement.. they use to be so much better about things and not even care.
i think what they got confused by was me telling the seller that "i would leave my positive review as is" (note the "as is" as in i already left one) because frankly i didn't have much time to go back and change it. the product failed within a the standard 30 day policy. i was in my right to get a refund.
So now i cant write reviews and i dont have prime anymore.