Amazon.co.uk: Low Prices in Electronics, Books, Sports Equipment & more (3 of 5 points)

When I first opened my account with Amazon UK back in 2002 I would gladly have given them 5 stars immediately, but not now!
Amazon used to be my first Go-To place when buying something but over the years I will look elsewhere first, only going to Amazon as a last resort.

The Pros:

Great prices, excellent Customer Service and their famous no quibble returns policy.

The Cons:

Far too many Marketplace dealers are con artists and fly-by-night dealers. Once they have your money good luck getting it back if you are not satisfied with the goods they supply.
Many of these dealers charge massive postage & packaging rates per each individual item yet when you receive their goods, they have combined everything into a single parcel, thus saving themselves that 'massive' charge.

I'm also more or less guaranteed to receive second-hand goods that are masquerading as 'new' yet am charged full 'new' price for it, especially if it's from the ever-popular electronics market! Perhaps this is the reason why the prices are so competitive.

Nowadays I'd rather buy directly from the better known dealers, pay more for the item and its P&P but have a better chance of receiving brand NEW goods. You know, those new goods I paid for!

How do I know many are second-hand I hear you asking?

Too many times I have ordered something from Amazon UK that is to be connected and used within my network and about 80% of the time I will find out that the item I received was returned by a previous customer for whatever reason, but who failed to do a factory reset on it. So unless they changed the manufacturer's password I can see all of their details, such as their wi-fi SSID and its password etc.

The item will of course refuse to even recognise my network unless so unless I reset it myself, it's a pointless piece of kit.

BTW I do not have an issue buying second-hand goods. I've bought plenty of second-hand goods over the Internet, but at least they were advertised as being second-hand.

However, I do have an issue buying new goods, being charged the full cost of said new item, only to find out that it is actually second-hand.

Apart from the obvious poor build quality of many "Made in China" items, the poor quality can also be seen in the original box the item came in. Security seals broken and the box showing obvious signs that it had been opened many times.

Too many items are brought into the IK from mainland European countries. No harm in that as we're presently still in the EU, except that those country's tend to use completely different plugs than we do in the UK which means an adapter is required. On extremely rare occasion will one of the better, more reliable Marketplace dealers supply the required adaptor inside the box, but usually there's none. And those who don't supply one, which is about 98% of dealers, don't even bother mentioning that fact in the details of their advert. If they did then the buyer could at least buy one when they order the goods.

I'll end now or I'll be writing all night about my Amazon UK experiences.

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