> It's become an eBay, but without a proper dispute system, and crazy prices.
I have to disagree about the dispute process. My experience as a buyer on Amazon is definitely that the pricing is all over the place, but in every case I've asked for a refund I've received it, and in the majority of cases I've not returned the item, _or_ paid for return shipping.
Well I agreed until this recent situation, where they refused to cancel and refund because the "order was already in shipping" -- which when I looked at the tracking they eventually gave me simply meant they had printed a shipping label for transferring it from the third party to an Amazon warehouse, before they even shipped it to the Canadian Amazon warehouse.
They hid that it was third party supplied and then failed to respond when I asked them to cancel based on that.
The item I ordered was time sensitive. If I'd known it was coming from the US I would have ordered from a domestic supplier that would have shipped faster except the shipping was more.
> They hid that it was third party supplied and then failed to respond when I asked them to cancel based on that.
Yeah, this is really really poor on their behalf, and I'm not a fan of it at all.
> If I'd known it was coming from the US I would have ordered from a domestic supplier that would have shipped faster except the shipping was more.
It's funny you say that. I'm more inclined to order via prime, because I somewhat trust the shipping dates, so for a time sensitive order, non-prime is usually 3-5 working days. I've been lucky so far.
Agreed with everything you've said though, I've actually had more luck with ebay for <random household item>
I have to disagree about the dispute process. My experience as a buyer on Amazon is definitely that the pricing is all over the place, but in every case I've asked for a refund I've received it, and in the majority of cases I've not returned the item, _or_ paid for return shipping.