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Amazon's Discount Store Is Here, and It's Full of Junk. "Amazon Haul" is a sub-$20 discount online store to compete with the likes of Temu and Shein. (gizmodo.com)

submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Budget Chinese retailers such as Temu and Shein successfully made Amazon feel insecure enough for it to come up with its own version, Amazon Haul. The e-commerce giant had been talking about launching a similar discount store with all items priced under $20. It launched in beta today and is available as a separate tab on the Amazon phone app, titled Haul.

It kept its promise and ensured a $20 price cap with most items under $10. The product categories include fashion, home, lifestyle, and electronics. It says the delivery time will be between one and two weeks, much longer than Amazon’s typical delivery timelines of within a week and a day or two if you’re a Prime member. However, the longer delivery times make sense since the Amazon Haul products will be shipped directly from a fulfillment center in Guangdong, China.

Scrolling through the items, you’ll quickly realize they’re fairly poor quality but nothing different from what Temu and Shein offer. Unlike the regular Amazon, Amazon Haul is more for impulsive shopping during late-night doom scrolling. This might be why the feature is mobile-exclusive. It’s similar to the in-app shopping feature TikTok introduced because it knows how impulse shopping works.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (2 children)

my favorite part about shopping for shit on Amazon is the gamble. is it going to be a total piece of shit? are parts going to be missing? is it the completely wrong item?

the stakes are my time spent looking at reviews and customer photos and the purchase price, which is somewhat related to how much of a turd the item is.

it's so obvious Amazon is all about AWS and has totally hollowed out their fulfillment processes.

I also moved outside of Amazon's targeted geography this year, and the prime ship times have all gone from 1-3 days to like 1-2 weeks.

I have been looking at ali express a little, but my question is... do you typically find what you're looking for on it or do you specifically buy certain things from it?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

China is famous for cheaply produced junk. But most of the good stuff on the market these days is also made in China, and those factories are probably also on AliExpress. You have to do a lot of the same research you'd have to do with Amazon purchases (a lot of it is just the same stuff) but you can almost always find cheaper prices at AliEx.

Will you find a specific brand-name thing you're looking for? No (unless it's a Chinese or AliExpress-native brand, which is a thing these days). Will you find something in a product category that will probably solve the problem you're having? Yeah, good chance (again, pretty much the same way that Amazon works now).

I've had good luck with: t-shirts, costume pieces, USB cables, audio cables, watches and watch accessories (bands, boxes, etc.), guitar pedals and other guitar accessories, sunglasses, photo accessories.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I got my (very good) thunderbolt eGPU dock from AliEx.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

yeah I haven't personally looked into computer components on aliex but considering where they're all made I'm sure there are good sellers with good stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ali express is a complete gamble, but I usually get more or less what I ordered. Be sure to read the descriptions, especially relating to the size of whatever you're ordering.

But, mostly, I get what I ordered. Mostly beads, craft supplies, tools, and workshop consumables.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The problem with aliexpress is that the descriptions are too sparse. Kinda gotta kn9w your shit or be willing to dig and research.

The problem with amazon is that everything is a forgery. Fine for t shirt, less fine for fancy skin creme.