I purchased a cordless power tool for the THEN-great deal of ~$200USD — item arrives, along with bribe to "leave a review and we'll send you a SECOND FREE BATTERY!"<p>Cool, as I typically leave reviews around 60-days of ownership... for this case I MADE AN EXCEPTION and immediately rated 5-stars. Left wondering 'how can they make this already-great deal EVEN BETTER?!'<p>Six weeks later, no 2nd battery has arrived (yet); I have been enjoying the new power tool immensely (still am); I walk into my local CostCo and see the same tool, packaged with TWO batteries, for ~$130USD!!!<p>Thankfully, it stung Less when my 2nd battery (from having left a review on Amazon) arrived from the re-seller. Tool still runs great!
Observation: "Buy $Thing from Amazon" seems to have become the hard-wired default behavior of a large fraction of my friends / family / coworkers. And their kinda-regular crappy experiences with Amazon elicit plenty of complaining...but do not seem to stimulate real "should I change my behavior?" doubts.<p>If a large-enough fraction of Amazon's customer base behave that way, then Amazon's obvious profit-maximizing strategy is to keep making things crappier and crappier.
Amazon is full to the brim with poor quality knock off products — using it now is almost akin to browsing Wish, Temu, etc. I find myself using it less and less.
I bought a pair of wide fit walking shoes last time, they were no more a wide fit than any other random brand of walking shoe. I left a review to warn others that, despite 500 or so people claiming these were the best wide fit shoes they ever owned, the shoes were not a wide fit.<p>Sure enough comes the email asking me to remove my review, claim a refund and keep the shoes.