My neighborhood stores have huge markups and bad customer service. I don't love Amazon but they are a better alternative for most things.
People should check again. After I decided to avoid Amazon, I’m surprised by how many things are cheaper and/or better quality at my local stores. I think Amazons reputation for lowest prices is less true every year.
How about both arguments are true. You just have to price check constantly and you will find some stores are cheaper and some are pricier than Amazon.
Yes, sometimes Amazon is cheaper. But one reason I quit amazon was because, even when it’s cheaper, I got so much counterfeit and super low quality disposable junk.
Seriously, take another look at your local stores. I suspect many people aren’t and are just making assumptions. I was surprised to find my local pet store offers free delivery, and literally everything at my local mom and pop hardware store is cheaper and better quality.
Local hardware stores are a must. And if you find a good one where they know what they're talking about you can get a lot of great advice depending on the project you're working on.
Try using them as a reference guide instead of buying from them. I find what I'm looking for rhen loom up the products own website. A couple extra steps but it's not like I'm out hunting and gathering, I'm in air conditioning and chair or taking a huge dump.
I'm sure most people here don't remember when power strips and HDMI cables were $40 and coin batteries were like $15 each pre inflation because stores wanted to make money on them. We could only read, listen to, and watch what our local stores decided to stock and most things didn't have reviews. If we needed a new power adapter for that one device with a special shaped connector, too bad. It's literally impossible to buy it.
Europe:
Amazon is evil though. So, yeah.
But there are perfectly rational reasons to use amazon.
Same here in the US Midwest. 90% of these fabled amazing local businesses are incredibly overpriced and often run by assholes who treat you like shit, treat their employees even worse, and often don't know their products any better than a Walmart employee. Also often incredibly right wing, which of course connects to them treating their employees like shit again.
If I'm going to support bad people and bad business I'd rather do it in a way that benefits me.
Spot on. The OP doesn't need to make up reasons Amazon are shit and should be avoided. There are plenty of legitimate reasons
I wish Amazon didn’t treat their employees so shittily. But I really don’t want to find out which of the stores around me have the thing I want and go there by bus. Even without prime the tickets are more expensive than shipping.
Sucks that my packages keep getting stolen
And that's why in other countries, delivery services aren't allowed to drop a package at the door unless you've explicitely told them to do so
Amazon totally drops packages outside in Ireland
Here in Romania that is unheard of. The courier will personally hand it to the recipient. If you are not home, you have the option to redirect it to a different address, courier HQ or some local stores that they have contract with. And even so, they ask for a verification code you get via sms in the morning. It's very unlikely to lose a package.
Depends on the area. Where I live I’ve never had a package stolen, Amazon or otherwise.
Some countries stupidly accept non delivery as the norm, and that's on them.
If your delivery person leaves your package outside your house, that's NOT, I repeat NOT delivered.
They got 99.9% of the way to delivering it and then abandoned it on the street at the very last step. It must be handed to an occupant or pushed through the letterbox to be delivered. This is obvious.
What do real delivery companies in normal countries do? If they can't deliver the parcel, they don't just drop it on the floor and wander off, because they're not insane. They either try to leave it with a neighbour, or they try to deliver it again another day (or depending on the service, they may leave a paper slip in the letterbox indicating that it can be collected from the local depot).
Countries that accept delivery people throwing their stuff on the floor undelivered have nobody to blame for that but themselves. That is not the norm, it is not reasonable, and they only do it because the people in those countries allow it, and don't do anything about it.
It's madness. Utter insanity. Imagine if the postman did this with important letters!? "The letterbox is stuck, better just leave then on the floor outside!" Can you imagine! MADNESS.
Speak for yourself. I’d rather them leave the shit at the door then have to trudge my ass down to the post office to pick it up, which I have had to do for certain deliveries and it’s annoying every time.
You know even FedEx delivers packages into customers hands in Europe? You have to sign on their tablet that you received the package. They call you in advance if you are there for delivery and if you are nearby they even do a detour. This is general practice for all big delivery companiesike DHL, GLS, DPD, FedEx and many more.
I prefer having my shit left at the door as opposed to being bothered to have to come to the door to personally accept it from them.
I'm typically busy and I'll get it when I get to it... But, I don't live somewhere where I have to be paranoid that someone is just waiting to steal my shit either.
You say that, but in the US, if you don't live in an apartment, your letterbox most likely doesn't lock or anything like that either. They may as well just be tossing the mail onto the floor.
Brazilian here. Had a package get home when no one was there. Delivery girl called me and asked if she could leave it with a neighbor and which one. Told her the one to leave it with and that was it. Leaving it on the street is insane
I have an unlocked box outside on the street where letters go. That's where the postman leaves them. Tampering or stealing the mail = 30 years in prison.
Who the absolute hell is doing this? I've had very few packages stolen in my decades of experience. Maybe, 1 or 2 out of hundreds?...
Yeah this is such a strawman argument lol. There's lots to hate about Amazon as a company, but to act like it's actually an inconvenient service to use is fucking stupid. And Amazon didn't put all the small businesses out of business, Target, Walmart, and friends had already done that. At this point it's just Amazon vs the giant retail corps, and frankly I couldnt care less who wins that battle, except that I'd love to see the final outcome be mutual annihilation (not that that's likely)
Same. And the thing with Amazon is most of the shit I buy on there, I can't really buy local. Computer shit especially. Used to be, we had a Fry's that was about 2 hours away. So, far enough that it required planning and usually would wait for the weekend, which usually meant amazon would be faster anyway.
edit: just to be clear, I wish that amazon didn't have as much utility as it does because they're a shit company, but I kinda feel like this is the norm with just about every corp these days.
I absolutely agree that local shops closing is a bad thing, but for a lot of niche goods companies like Amazon are a good thing. Delivery by one vehicle is far more efficient than everyone driving their own vehicle to whatever niche shop has your stuff. Don't get me wrong, Amazon is 100% a big evil corporation with huge problems... but the fact that they deliver goods to your house is not the problem lol. Doubly so since you can designate a day for them to deliver and just be in on that day!
Recently needed to buy a KVM switch to swap between my work computer and my personal computer on the same monitor. Not a single brick and mortar store in my entire area stocked them.
For me Amazon delivers to my doorstep, listens and acts on complaints if undelivered or product is faulty, arrange replacement for free, allow me to use stuffs for a month and then return no questions asked, and is way more cost effective.
Say whatever about their business practices, they beat local stores in every possible way and it's not even close.
For me as a customer, local stores doesn't make any possible sense.
Never had a package get stolen before, but if I ordered something expensive I have it sent to the Amazon locker about 5 min away. Last year I needed an ironing board, I went to Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Roses. The only ironing board I found was at Bed Bath and Beyond for $120. I bought my ironing board on Amazon for $25 and it arrived the next day, also I didn't have to pay shipping because of prime. I have prime, but I cut Netflix when I got it. Now I get my packages faster, with free shipping, and I get Prime Video.
Recently I bought a new foam mattress and they brought it to my house, unboxed it, put it on the bed frame, and took the old one away. This cost me $200 and I had free shipping with Prime.
Hate on Amazon all you want, there are plenty of reasons, but they're doing the business better than big box stores which had already driven most small businesses out years ago.
I mean this buisness model is a dream for introverts
This is only my personal experience but...
I've never had a package stolen. Even when I lived in a sketchy apartment years ago. If it's a high value item I either have it delivered to me at my work (this is a privileged position to have, I know) or get it delivered at an Amazon locker a mile or two down the road.
Would it be a pain in my ass if I lived in a high crime area, worked somewhere that didn't accept my deliveries, and relied on public transport? Absolutely. But I'm guessing that's not who the majority of Amazon's customer base is.
Never had anything stolen. Guess living in a European village is nice after all.
To be fair, the delivery really is handy if you're shopping for something niche enough that it isn't sold locally, or if you don't have a car and are trying to buy something not sold within walking distance/within easy access to transit if available, or which is too heavy to carry without a vehicle. There's definitely a point here about local stores not being able to compete or with Amazon's monopolistic business practices though. The ideal thing I suppose would be some sort of website that local stores could sign up with to let people order stuff from to be delivered by the store or by a service the store uses, run as a non-profiting venture just at breakeven to avoid a motive to exploit stores that use it and have less individual power, combined with some kind of law against averaging shipping costs into the base costs of products and making shipping seem free, so as to ensure that local items are generally cheaper due to less needed transportation. In such a scenario, the central online shopping area wouldn't end up as a competitor to smaller local stores since it wouldn't actually sell anything itself, customers would be encouraged to buy items that take less transportation and thus fewer carbon emissions, and the convenience of having an online space in which almost everything for sale can be found and delivered can be preserved.
I used to go to a local book store, until they stopped stocking any new science fiction. Then they went out of business and I was forced to buy books at Amazon as there was no other book store to go to.
Ehh, call me a 🤡 but I kinda like sitting at home to browse, pay for the thing that doesn't even exist at another store, then go get it at the post office 2 blocks away from home, right beside the grocery store, on my way home when it's ready.
Same jar of fish food at my local pet store is $24 and on Amazon it's $12.
I mean, I take advantage of everything Prime offers. Movies, discounts, games, books, all of it, so I definitely get back more than the cost. I've also got a locker within walking distance of my house, and Walmart already did in all my local businesses, so I'm not worried about hurting their bottom line.
USPS has lost a dozen or so of my checks and packages but I have never had any of the hundreds of packages delivered stolen.
Amazon Lock boxes are like PO boxes but free, you just order with one as a destination and you put a code in and it unlocks a locker with your item in it
I don't like Amazon but I mean this does pretty much defeat porch piracy
Lol, I never thought of it that way. I will admit, though, that package theft was already a thing. It's really bad if you live in an apartment.
Get a locking shipment container for deliveries. From Amazon, of course.
Ditched Amazon altogether when they started pushing Prime at every corner. Nobody needs to buy and get instant shipping for tons of useless crap
I'm in the middle of downtown in a small city shops are heavily weighed towards convenience or kick nacks. EG 2 different gift stores and no hardware store. Lots of convenience stores and two specialty markets but only one grocery store and that at least double the cost and 1/100th the selection of the chain stores with the floor space of 7-11.
Looking back small shops always had shitty prices and selection
If you purchase any tech over $150, and need to return it, you'll be waiting a month for your refund. Amazon has been slowing down refunds for the last nine months or so, before that, refund issued day of return to ups.
