Products and services where the new version is not as good or has significant disadvantages as the old

Tetchytyke said:

Between Amazon being a marketplace for AI slop and dropshipped Chinese crap, and Amazon's use of only the very worst delivery couriers, I don't quite see what the point of it is anymore or why anyone would actually buy anything from it. Most of the stuff on there is now sold by companies who seem to have a very limited life expectancy; I put a couple of them into the fraud screening software we use at work as a test and the results were illuminating.

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For me it's the lockers. If we get to a point where the other couriers will reliably deliver to pickup locations rather than my house (without the option for the sender to prevent that) then I'll start not using them. Evri and DPD almost reliably do this now, and Royal Mail sort of (though normally only after a failed delivery) but in the former case it's possible for the sender to specify it not be allowed. Some Amazon stuff can't be (generally if fulfilled by an outside company) but if I see that I just order something else.

As for brands they are mostly made up, similar to Aldi/Lidl's approach to doing this e.g. "Harvest Morn corn flakes" instead of "Aldi corn flakes" with some spiel on the back that implies Harvest Morn are actually an organisation and not just a brand Aldi uses. I believe the various Chinese factories have got good at naming the brands for maximum marketing and algorithmic appeal.

Bletchleyite said:

I believe the various Chinese factories have got good at naming the brands for maximum marketing and algorithmic appeal.

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Sometimes. Mrs Tyke was looking for clothes a few months ago on Amazon, goodness knows why, and found an obvious Chinese dropshipper which had called itself Semen. I suppose there is an algorithmic appeal to naming your womenswear brand Semen, but it's more for the lols rather than to buy anything.

At this stage I can only assume most of them are either money laundering or running a carousel fraud, or maybe both.

CaptainHaddock said:

if the site’s feeling a bit malevolent, will claim I’ve tried to sign in too many times with the wrong password (which I haven’t) and not let me in at all!

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Sounds like someone's trying to login "on your behalf" - if you've had the account that long no doubt it's on plenty of dark web account leaks. www.haveibeenpwned.com can be instructive viewing. My main email is in 17 data breeches apparently and that's just ones that site knows about!

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Sep 2026 ==

Tetchytyke said:

Sometimes. Mrs Tyke was looking for clothes a few months ago on Amazon, goodness knows why, and found an obvious Chinese dropshipper which had called itself Semen. I suppose there is an algorithmic appeal to naming your womenswear brand Semen, but it's more for the lols rather than to buy anything.

At this stage I can only assume most of them are either money laundering or running a carousel fraud, or maybe both.

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Still there apparently: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/semen/page/DAD213BA-5422-4F63-BF61-E4942B9047CF