I’ll start - I don’t shop a lot, but if I had to buy stuff like hardware parts, I do use Amazon sometimes, but if I can, then I try to use Flipkart. Realizing how it has turned into a monopoly, I try to look for alternative websites, and check if they’re trustworthy.
If I remember correctly, the last three items I’ve bought online were hardware parts from some local websites. The chi-fi IEMs were bought through headphonezone.in, and they were super-fast in delivery - I had to wait for only four days.
I used to buy almost everything on Amazon - electronics, books, kitchen/office/cleaning supplies, etc. Back then I was a Prime subscriber so I did not pay for the delivery. As for the delivery, it was blazing fast and the item was always in a mint condition. In case of any issues I was able to sort it out within a day or two. And the price was better than the other online or brick and mortar stores.
However, at some point the quality of the products went downhill. Support became unhelpful and the prices got higher than the competition. One time I had some issues with the order. It never got delivered and the process to get my money back was way too long and too complex. Eventually I have contacted my bank and reported the fraud. Eventually I got my money back. Turned out that such issues were not an anomaly and a lot of people reported shady sellers.
Since then I have unsubscribed from Prime and every time I found something I wanted to buy I’ve checked the seller and if there was a website I bought directly from them.
For past few years I didn’t buy a thing on Amazon.
As for the alternatives, I don’t have a single one. I have several websites I usually buy from but in general I always do some research and buy the product from the seller that has the best price and is trusted enough.
Same.
Unsubscribing from Prime has made zero difference in our lives. They kept advertising “there’s more to prime”, none of which we used, which made me realize we’re paying for all this stuff and getting nothing out of it.
Combined with it sort of going the way of eBay with all sorts of junk and not much quality stuff… It’s not really that great anymore.
I used to sort by best reviews, but that can’t be trusted anymore.
Cory Doctorow has been calling out this enshittification for years. The whole read is good, but here is a sample chunk:
Amazon’s monopoly (control over buyers) gives it a monopsony (control over sellers), which lets it raise prices everywhere, at Amazon and at every other retailer, even as it drives the companies that supply it into bankruptcy.
Amazon is no longer a place where a scrappy independent seller can find an audience for its products. In order to navigate the minefield Amazon lays for its sellers (who have no choice but to sell there), these indie companies are forced to sell out to gators (aggregators), which are now multi-billion-dollar businesses in their own right:
See also his piece Amazon is a ripoff.
A combination of self-preferencing (upranking Amazon’s own knock-offs), pay-for-placement (Amazon ads), other forms of payola (whether a merchant is paying for Prime), and “junk ads” (that don’t match your search) turn Amazon’s search-ordering into a rigged casino game.
I avoid Amazon. Deleted my account years ago. They treat their workers like shit, don’t pay their taxes, extract wealth and send it overseas, pollute like there’s no tomorrow, but most importantly, Jeff Bezos is not a nice man.
My shopping happens mostly online, at farmers markets and local stores.
I’m avoiding Amazon for many years now. To be fair I usually just… Don’t buy things?
But when I have to, I try to go local shop first, second hand websites/markets, other websites and eventually Amazon, I guess? It never came to this.
I have spent 10/20% more than the price on Amazon though.
Last but not least, for niece stuff I have used Amazon as a sort of catalogue to find out what exists and then look for things further by other means.
B&H photo is good for electronics
Amazon is always the first place I check whenever I want to buy anything. I order frequently enough that Prime more than pays for itself every year, and I hate making new accounts on new websites to order anything elsewhere unless it’s just not available on Amazon.
I don’t like that it’s this way, but it’s the most cost-effective way of shopping for me.
These days most sites that do direct sales use a service like Shopify that let’s you 1 click enter your info. I’m quite wary of them consolidating power, but they are definitely still better than Amazon today and very convenient.
I use it out of laziness. Despite all the shit they still have great customer service. About a year ago I ordered a £150 multi-tool and they accidentally sent me a £200 reciprocating saw. Due to a complicated living situation at the time it would have taken me about 6 months to send the wrong tool back so they just said I could keep it and refunded me so I could buy the other tool again.
The other thing I like is that I’ll just see a price and buy it easily. I’ve often shopped around and found something cheaper but then the whole purchasing process is terrible. They add on a bunch of extra costs, then make me create an account, then add on more costs. By the end I could’ve paid less and got it quicker from Amazon. Not always the case but it happens often enough that I will just go to Amazon half the time.
But I guess the main reason is that I hate being forced to create accounts and so many shops require that for no good reason.
I use it a lot because it’s stupidly convenient - most things arrive in 1-2 days at the same or less cost than a store and i can get jelly beans, a screwdriver, and socks in one order. I guess that’s how they get you. I have started trying to do more ‘buy online; pickup in store’ to support some local businesses.
I prefer to have to jump through additional hoops to avoid ever using amazon. they keep their prices low by paying staff badly and treating them like shit. I refuse to participate
I used to use eBay instead but due to a recent incident I feel uncomfortable using it. I bought an item and after there was still no tracking number for a week or two, I contacted the seller. More time passed and they told me to wait again. The next time I just ask for a refund.
They ghost me and I decide to escalate to eBay, they have great protections right? Money back guarantee right? Turns out, if you do not report the item within 30 days of purchasing, you can’t do shit. Ok, I’ll just make a fuss to customer service. EBAY HAS NONE. There is a contact page but it is all automated and won’t apply to my item. Other than that there is no way to contact them. Abosolutely zero. There are no emails, they sometimes have a phone number but it changes and doesn’t even work most of the time. People are even saying yo DM their twitter!
I had a case where an item never arrived from Amazon. I simply contacted their customer service, answered their questions and got a refund within 10 mins.
It feels so shitty that just by trusting the seller for 2 months, I got robbed and there’s nothing I can do. Amazon, you are at least guaranteed to speak to a human and get some help.
And also eBay reviews suck, the seller that scammed me had over 90% positive feedback, tens of thousands sold items, so I assumed they were legit. All of their negative reviews were the same issue I had and they are still on the platform.
Okay, wait, so if were to I purchase internationally from eBay using basic USPS shipping, which costs a whopping $120, plus $200-400 worth of refurbished stuff from the USA to India, which takes around 30 days, and I don’t get my stuff, then am I screwed? What the fuck? I am broke right now, but I was planning to get a laptop in the nearest future from ItsWorthMore (that was the name of the seller you’ve mentioned, right?). Now I am having second thoughts about buying stuff from eBay.
The seller that scammed me was huku huku japan. Apparently this is a very big problem with Japanese sellers, many of them are simply bots that copy and translate listings from Japanese second hand sites, then direct the shipping address to the eBay customer.
They are terrible because they offer zero transparency and missing items are common. Since it is automated, if there was a mistake in Japan (ie original seller lost the item and refunded the buyer) you don’t get your item, or a refund. Basically dropshipping. It’s sickening that they are given a full refund, but keep the eBay buyers money and shipping fee. In total they stole 70$ from me.
Similar to you, I expected long shipping times. I’m in the US and was buying from Japan. Since the shipping times are so long, I gave the seller a lot of leniency. Especially because tracking only occurs after the item has already left japan. This unknowingly disqualified me from a refund, or any help at all from eBay.
If you are looking for cheap refurbished laptops, I recommend PC Sever and Parts. Ive bought from them before and they have good customer service and generous free warranty (90 days). I work IT and I was satisfied with the refurbishment. There were some covered scratches, but it was clean and thermal paste was changed.
I had a lightly damaged cable internal cable. They offered to pay for return shipping and refund me, but I just asked for replacement cables. They quickly shipped me 2 new ones free of charge and shipping.
If you keep picking a single replacement for the big corporation that conveniently carries everything, you’re just following Southpark’s wal-mart pattern. Take two extra seconds and see if you can buy the product directly from the manufacturer’s website, some other niche/specialty retail site, or from a brick & mortar store down the street.
We ditched Prime a few months back after they pulled the adverts fuckery with Video. It wasn’t a terribly difficult decision, what with buying less and less from Amazon over the past couple of years.
What it has highlighted though, is how effectively Amazon has fucked our high streets. You want boot laces? Then your options are one chain store or online somewhere and that’s it. Which I guess has made me more mindful of what I’m buying.
And the chain store is $20 for the laces while on Amazon it is $12.99, and Shien and TikTok it’s $8.99 and Alibaba it’s $4.99-2.49…
I have successfully almost completely cut Amazon shopping out. We would spend hundred of £s every month and would buy everything off Amazon. But the company is terrible (mistreating workers, avoiding tax, etc etc). They’ve allowed their site to get flooded with (low quality) trash. Reviews are unreliable. Prices are comparable or more expensive to elsewhere. I do still buy from there once in a while for quick delivery and easy returns.
Alternatives:
eBay - sucks for product reviews, but is good if you know what you’re getting (e.g. something branded). Delivery is through the post rather than mistreated delivery drivers needing to piss in bottles. I managed to help a hospice by buying excess stock it had via eBay. Also I’m starting to get everything I can secondhand. Makes shopping cheaper and it’s better for the environment.
HotUKDeals - a sales sharing website that links through to other small retailers with good bargains. I find stuff here frequently and always search this site first when I want something.
Overall I’m buying a lot less stuff and I’m really happy with that.
Yes. It’s the only big tech that I use by choice. It’s too damn convinient, and it makese feel guilty that I’m so reliant on it.
I use it as one of several sites…there are some things they are still the best / most convenient for. For cheap chinese crap (which is often all I need for small projects etc) temu and aliexpress now undercut amazon considerably. For quality items that are ok to buy used, ebay.
ANYTHING that costco sells will almost always be the best choice, but they have a very limited selection.
So in short, amazon is very much still in play, but as one of many, not the go-to anymore.
For people in Germany or Austria, Geizhals is great. It shows you the cheapest seller for every product and has a ton of information for each product that you can filter by.
Also, there is this (German) collection of online shops sorted by categories.
I use it all the time for convenience. I have 2 autistic little kids and work 10-12 hours a day and it isn’t always practical to get to the store. Plus I’m lazy. Amazon is local to my area - friends and family work there (both tech and warehouse).
I’ve been boycotting Amazon (UK) for a few years now. It’s not easy! Sometimes it doesn’t take much longer to source items, but other times it takes way longer. I have limits though, and occasionally I end up caving-in and just using Amazon, but it’s getting rarer all the time. Now I use them once or twice per year. I tried using onbuy for a while, but we got a couple of faulty items from them and their support completely ignored me, so I stopped using them. Generally, here are some of my most common alternatives:
general stuff and gifts: Argos, ebay, etsy
tech: overclockers, ebuyer, scan.co.uk
electronics: John Lewis, AO, Richer Sounds
books/dvds: hive.co.uk, Waterstones, WH Smith
pharma: boots, simpleonlinepharmacy, well
household: Robert Dyas, Dunelm, John Lewis
pets: zooplus
spare parts: buyspares.co.ukAnd for a wishlist alternative I use wishlist.com. (edited to fix formatting)
