David Court

Imoved to New Zealand in 2017, and one piece of technology I initially struggled without was Amazon. When I was fresh off the boat, I was convinced that what this country desperately needed was the Amazon culture that I was used to back in England.

But now, 21⁄2 years on, my feelings towards the online shopping giant are ambivalent. Does New Zealand need Amazon? I’m not so sure.

Let me explain. Full-fat Amazon is a kind of culture. When I lived in London, I used to pay £7.99 a month, roughly NZ$16, and I used Amazon to buy everything I needed barring groceries and clothes.

Quick example: If I needed a new phone charger, I could either spend the equivalent of $25 for one in the local electronics shop or pay $5 on Amazon and have it arrive in my letterbox the next morning.

There are thousands of other examples where Amazon massively undercuts the prices on the high street or in shopping malls.

Price, range of products and free delivery were the three pillars of Amazon’s rapid rise to dominance.

Fast-forward to today, and things are slightly different on Amazon UK. The biggest drawcard, free delivery, isn’t very free anymore. You have to have an order value of £20 (NZ$40) to qualify.

So if you wanted that cheap phone charger quickly, you would have to supplement it with three times as much guff just to qualify for free delivery.

Amazon’s algorithm has also come under fire. It’s alleged that the Amazon search engine displays and even adds ‘‘Amazon Choice’’ badges to products based on the volume of sales, rather than any legitimate review process.

And speaking of reviews, Amazon’s on-site ‘‘user reviews’’ have also come under fire for being engineered.

The Washington Post reported: ‘‘Many of these fraudulent reviews originate on Facebook, where sellers seek shoppers on dozens of networks, including Amazon Review Club and Amazon Reviewers Group, to give glowing feedback in exchange for money

TheMarket is already offering something that I think could rival Amazon.