This isn’t exactly where this belongs so feel free to delete this. I’m mildly infuriated there is no usable alternative to Amazon.com. I’m more than willing to buy products elsewhere, but it’s so easy to default to Amazon. Please help.
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This is always the problem: Monopolies are popular with consumers because their centralization makes everything easy. The trappings of convenience.
Buy stuff directly from stores. Every time I’ve looked, the price elsewhere often exactly matches what Amazon charges because their pricing algorithms are constantly price matching anyhow.
I tend to buy straight from vendors. like I ordered some underwear straight from Hanes the other day.
Not sure what you are looking for but I can easily buy the same stuff on eBay or Walmart or directly from the retailer. I do a search of Amazon and then google the same product to look at different website options.
I’m more than willing to buy products elsewhere, but it’s so easy to default to Amazon.
One of the practices that the FTC sued Amazon over was their requirement that sellers list their lowest prices on Amazon and outsource fulfillment (and give up a huge cut) to Amazon in order to qualify for Prime and good search results.
The result is that even though most sellers can afford to sell on their own store and keep a larger percentage of the sales revenue, they’re not allowed to actually undercut Amazon’s prices. And so Amazon has shielded itself from price competition, despite engaging in pretty expensive practices (free 2 day shipping for most items and places, free 1-day or even same day shipping for some items in some places). And they did it with contracts instead of actually competing.
We need a new Amazon rain forest.
Outside of NA there are.
When I want a cheap plastic thingy, or cheap hardware and electronics to play around with, I get it off aliexpress. It’s virtually the same stuff as amazon just for the patient. Most of that stuff is made in China already even if I get it from an online or local brick and mortar retailer, so it seems more direct to me, avoiding needless retransportation, warehousing and waste.
When I want a quality thing I buy it from a local shop, especially when I need to see it or compare before buying. I can often find a Canadian online retailer too with just a bit of sleuthing.
For cheap plastic “thingies” if you know a friend with a 3D printer they can be of massive help. Even if you don’t have such a friend, there are domestic businesses that will print and ship things for you. Granted they aren’t always as cheap, but easily better for the environment due to being more local.
I can often find a Canadian online retailer too with just a bit of sleuthing I’ve tried this a few times and most of them end up just being drop shippers with their own website dedicated to a type of product (and are questionably Canadian), sometimes shipping from whatever country warehouse to me. Any ideas how to tell vs an actual located in Canada shop?
Look at their address and their warehouse, look at the website of the brands of products they sell and find their address. Are they Canadian or are they just a reseller of the same stuff coming from overseas?
This right here! If you are looking at something on amazon go to Ali or Temu.
Quitting Amazon to use AliExpress or Temu is like quitting drinking alcohol by switching to heroin instead.
Environmental issues aside, cheap disposable shit that you have to replace constantly actually costs you way more in the long run.
But there is… Walmart.com in the US offers basically the same and often with 2 day shipping and in most cases same easy return.
I think he was hoping for something better than Amazon, as opposed to worse.
Every big name store has something similar the issue is that its worse or the same as Amazon, never better.
Probably not aligned with the OP but id like a place that aggregates quality things from all over no cheap sketchy plastic things but also not just common big items that are already in every big box store.
Honestly after moving into our current home, we were able to avoid Amazon almost completely. We don’t buy cookware, as carbon steel, cast iron, and stainless steel cookware lasts at least decades if not forever; we have way too many mugs from market and thrift store; and all of our clothes are thrifted with some from Costco.
we get groceries from farmers market, local ethnic stores, or super market. We get shelf stable products like toilet paper or drinks from Costco in bulk. We barely replace our electronic, because I would fix them with spare parts from ifixit and eBay; when it do need to get replaced, I get them from bestbuy or manufacture. We get most of the cleaning products from refil store or supermarket; we would buy soap from farmers market or local supplier.
We would only buy very obscure product from Amazon, like replacement knob for pot lid etc, but they are very very rare. One particular product we unfortunately relied on Amazon is the bamboo electric toothbrush brush head, we are trying to find some local salers that carry that, but cannot find any.
its the obscure parts and items that get me going back to Amazon…
Same here. Sometimes the same/next day shipping can help in an emergency, but otherwise it’s local if possible, or direct from the vendor if not.
Amazon’s shipping has declined and everyone else’s has caught up to the point it’s not much of a difference anymore.
No.
Amazon is what it is because it creates an easier path for America to buy cheap, as Walmart and McDonald’s has done before to great microscopic economic success, due to the failures of our economic paradigm that shrinks wages and pushes manufacturing offshore for corporate profit.
We need higher wages, which create higher prices, which corrects for the misdeeds of our economic exploitation of foreign economies.
We have offloaded our economic burden onto other poorer nations, and that needs to stop. Pay a living wage and accept the higher cost at lower profits. Doing otherwise is an economic ouroboros that only swallows the easy part at the sake of the whole in the name of kicking an inflationary can down the road so that yachts can grow larger as the foundation of this country in undermined for icarian profits.
Fuck your CEO, pay us so they can pay us something and they can have less than everything, so they can keep from having nothing less than more than we can achieve through reluctant violence.
I wish it’d had stayed in the USA, Amazon has upset economies in other countries too.
They’re also shit to work for.
The one I worked at I heard a spoiled rich manager laughing about how “Amazon wont pay a living wage due to its great relationship with the local community”.
Edit; i worded the first sentence badly. I dont want Amazon inflicted upon anyone.
“Amazon wont pay a living wage due to its great relationship with the local community”.
So, taken by a normal person, not aquainted with corpo speak… that is some astounding anti-logic.
But if you know a bit of corpo, what that actually means is something like:
We have the local city government by the balls, greatly overexagerated the economic benefit our warehouse would bring to the city, got them to subsidize our construction costs, relax zoning laws or fees, change tax laws or give us a special carve out so that we pay less than if anyone else tried to build a warehouse here…
… and now if the city gov goes for policies/laws we don’t like, we’ll just shut down this location, I’ll go work the same job somewhere else, everyone else is unemployed, and then we’ll tell the media that’s because of the city government, and they’ll likely lose their elected positions.
Thank you for explaining, i knew enough to know that this was some clever wording to avoid paying people properly, but not enough to know the depth or implications. This should really be put about more, cause as it stands people say “isnt it great that Amazon invest in the local road network” or provide computers for schools, or whatever the latest one is…soon theyll be saying “isnt it great that Amazon provide housing”.
The even shorter, more direct version is:
‘Local community’ actually means ‘Official representatives of the local community.’
EDIT: And ‘great relationship’ means ‘we do business with whatever entity regularly, and that business we do is more advantageous to us than it is to them’.
… Also… I’m in America so… maybe this is somehow different in various Euro countries, but I seriously doubt it…
There’s no way Amazon invests in local roads.
I’m from Seattle.
Our roads are absolute ass, I’m talking worse than the average road in a small town in South Dakota or Montana.
They certainly don’t directly fund any roadwork around Seattle, despite having many logistics hubs in and near the city.
They’re more likely to strong arm a city, even literally sue them, into upgrading their roads than they are to… like directly contribute some share of their revenue or profit directly into the city’s road maintenance or construction budget.
0 chance Amazon directly funds building of any roads beyond the roads on their property.
Provide computers to schools? Sure, I believe that.
But I am highly doubtful that Amazon directly contributes to building local roads.
Only way I can even see that kind of making sense in a roundabout way is if the city has some kind of specific tax on heavier vehicles or vehicles used in delivery/logistics…
In which case … this would apply to any delivery/logistics vehicle of any kind that either transits through or is based out of the city.
By that logic anyone that pays a sales tax or property tax in the city pays for new roads, likely significantly more, as a group.
I don’t have source, they’ve claimed to invest in roads and provide computers, but I strongly suspect you’re right, just can’t confirm it cause I can’t provide an example…so let’s just say you’re right.
Also Amazon EU I think is based in Ireland which is kind of a tax haven. We can’t even cooperate within the EU to prevent tax havens…
Climb down off of your soapbox. Amazon is what it is because of early strategic decision making and long term shittiness. I’m talking about aggregation and exposure to semi-local partners.
Wtf.
Isn’t this what Etsy has tried to do? Miserably failed at it recently I think.
I’ve never used Amazon, so I really don’t need a new one. Or the old one.
I’ve bought the occasional book from it. It doesn’t seem that useful or good value for other things (I’ve only lived in Europe and Australia)
My problem is the algorithm. There is no way to browse categories and drill down into the features to find what you are actually looking to find.
You search for xxx company Product, and you may get that product on the first page, but it will be surrounded by dozens of cheap alternatives. I find a lot of those alternatives aren’t comparable to the one I actually seek.
If you don’t know the specific product you are looking for, you will never be able to sort the wheat from the chaff.
One thing I’ve realized about Amazon, at least lately, is that they don’t always have the lowest prices. For many items, I can go directly to the manufacturer’s site and get the same product for a lower or equal price with free shipping. If I have to wait a couple extra days, so be it. At least I’m not lining Bezos’ pockets.
There are people who sell products who are not affiliated with Amazon
Shocking I know
Those are getting harder and harder to find. I’ve had a number of occasions now where I went directly to a brand’s website or even their physical store in an attempt to avoid Amazon, only to receive the product in an Amazon box delivered by an Amazon courier anyway.
The most recent physical store was shoes: I found a size/style that fit well, but wanted a different color. I ordered the preferred color through the in store salesperson, but it was still fulfilled by Amazon.
I take full responsibility for myself. I try to shop independently when possible.
Honestly I’ve been enjoying going to stores in person again. It definitely takes some getting used to after the convenience of online shopping has been a part of my life pretty much since I was in highschool, but I think the change is worth it. I’ll just make a list of things that I need and when the list gets big enough I just make a day of it and just go to a bunch of different stores.
I kinda forgot how satisfying it can be to actually go shopping. I got a couple new pillows and some new bed sheet sets last month and it was so nice being able to feel what I was buying before I actually got it. If I’d gotten the pillows from Amazon I guarantee I’d get something cheap and not find out until they show up that they are awful. And I probably wouldn’t return them and just justify it and convince myself they were better than my old pillows because they are “new.”
My issue with this is that, especially as a foreigner living abroad, I cannot always answer which shop might have the items I’m looking for.
I wish Google Maps allowed searching for shops by their inventory, like it does searching for restaurants by their menu. Even better, an open web protocol like RSS where shop websites can communicate to all crawlers what items are being sold where and which are out of stock, so that it’s not a Google Maps monopoly but an ecosystem…
If I’m being honest, the only thing stopping me from shopping at other sites is having to put my personal and payment details in yet another site for it to go stale, or fall out of my memory, or get leaked in the next big hack.
Some sites have “pay with Amazon” (more likely PayPal, but… ugh. I don’t remember why, but I hate it), but I’d love to see some universal adoption of some sort of payment and shipping details lockbox. Like SSO where you can revoke access to subscribers or something.
An SSO-like payment system with tracking and revocation is a great idea and would be amazing for us consumers. I’m just not holding my breath waiting for the corpos to implement it.
While nowhere near perfect (far from it, really), as long as the sites you are shopping on are PCI-compliant (most should be), you don’t have to worry too much about a compromised site leaking your payment details for use elsewhere.
Basically just use a password manager and don’t worry about saving credit card (NOT debit card) details in the site as long as they aren’t extra-sketchy.
That already exists with PayPal and Apple Pay for example. The remote site never sees your credit card, just an approval token. You won’t be able to get away from address though as they need to know how to get it to you.
