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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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.
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.
Isn’t this what Etsy has tried to do? Miserably failed at it recently I think.
Wtf.
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.
Find what you want on Amazon, look at reviews, and then go to the actual website of the producer and buy it directly from them. It’s not hard, it just takes an extra step.
You’ll probably buy less junk, too.
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.
I tend to buy straight from vendors. like I ordered some underwear straight from Hanes the other day.
If you don’t mind waiting a while for whatever it is you’re buying, ali-express isn’t too bad. If you’re near a city and it’s not too specialized of a thing you need you can probably find it at a a brick and mortar store.
Seconded that. Aliexpress is Amazon with longer shipping and worse return policy. They also have better reviews since they’re not mostly AI garbage.
Amazon is one issue, but I think the larger enshittification is the proliferation of “marketplace” websites that allow any random imported junk to appeat right alongside quality products with actual manufacturer support.
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…
Idk, Amazon doesn’t even exist in my country
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.
As a web dev myself, I know the sheer amount of money that would have to go into monkey patching together all these disparate protocols and ancient APIs, plus the regulatory requirements, and that’s BEFORE worrying about consumer AND vendor adoption. The only reason to get into it is if the service is secondary to chasing a lucrative buyout before you get crushed by some multinational online retail cartel you never knew existed (but always suspected), or Google AEEs you.
Fintech blows.
If you cannot afford to shop elsewhere, then I don’t see how it’s reasonable to fault you for that. But if you can justify spending a little less and want to avoid it, then I’m sure you know what I would suggest. Do or do not, a wise man once said.
Are you frustrated that you can’t muster the willpower to avoid shopping there? The website was literally designed to get you addicted to it. The man himself has said as such. There are browser extensions that will block specific url families. I wouldn’t be surprised if entire extensions were designed for that website specifically.
I just wish there was an aggregator that isn’t Walmart or Amazon or Temu. I try really hard to spread my shopping around and actually buy local when I can. It just sucks Amazon is so easy.
It isn’t really a good alternative, but Walmart.com has nearly as wide of a selection and the same delivery times.
Not that Walmart is a better company.
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.
One problem I’ve been having with ebay lately is that I’ve ordered items and they’re coming drop shipped from Amazon or Walmart.
They’re always sellers with ratings in the upper 90s and with like 1000ish or less reviews. A lot of times they list is as only having 1 or 2 left in stock. I’ve been having some luck going into the reviews and seeing people say “came in an Amazon box” to avoid them.
It’s one thing to wholesale stuff and resell it, it’s another to just drop ship it from Amazon and Walmart. Been ordering on ebay for many years and I’ve never seen this before.
That happened to me a few times before. I got the shipment in 2 days through Amazon even though I ordered through eBay.
Not perfect but a lot of big box stores offer free shipping. I usually will check Walmart, Best Buy, Target B&H and Google shopping. I’m pretty sure they all offer free shipping after $35. Chewy for animal stuff is really good too. Also check the manufacturer, I recently bought a gift that way and it was cheaper and had more selection options than dumb Amazon.
Came to say the same. I’m not sure how much my location plays a role, but B&H is my go-to for many electronics, Best Buy is a backup, and Target is up there too. I can pre-order BB and Tgt as well, giving me a few stores to choose from locally. The physical stores need to compete with Amazon to survive, so they are
Outside of NA there are.
