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.
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.
Really? I hear people say stuff like this all the time, but I have not experienced it at all. Every time I go to a brick and mortar store, I find that the price is still way cheaper when I look up the product on Amazon. Plus many other online stores still have ridiculously long shipping times whereas with Amazon it will sometimes even arrive in less than 24 hours.
I also have always had great experiences with Amazon support for faulty items or in the ease of returning my items.
I bought an item from a different online retailer recently. Took forever, they sent me the wrong item, and they refused to refund my money until it took snail mail to ship it back to them and for it to be restocked in their warehouse (not even an expensive item…$40). I was absolutely pissed about how difficult they made the situation over their own mistake when Amazon has always made it so easy for me.
Another company I purchased from recently required a signature for an item and customer service flat out refused to allow me to hold it for pickup like I normally do for items like that (I didn’t realize signed delivery at home address only was a thing…never had a product like that before). They made it a headache and a half to actually get my item because I work during the day and wouldn’t allow me to have it held to be signed for at a delivery center. If I order something like that from Amazon, they allow delivery to a secure locker so I don’t have to be home during the day to pick up my purchase like I’m some 1950s housewife.
There are other retailers still that are cheaper than Amazon, but you end up waiting a month or more for your items.
I get that Amazon is a morally shitty company, but I just have not found another company with anywhere remotely near the price point, shipping experience, and customer service as them. If someone is able to step up to the plate and do that, I’ll certainly switch to someone more moral.
I will say that I do not use Amazon for used products because you have absolutely zero idea of the condition for them. eBay has always been a far superior experience for that specific type of item because you can actually see what you’re buying.
B&H photo is good for electronics
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.
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 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 only made 3 purchases on it in the last year and 2 were gifts 1 was an emulator card for GBA, all three were not accessible locally.
I generally don’t order stuff online, pretty much ever. I don’t really need more stuff.
I actively avoid Amazon, however there’s a brand I really like that only sells through Amazon in my country, so I’ve used it a couple of times when I have no other choice.
I also have an audible account from before it was acquired by Amazon, idk if that counts, but I stopped paying for it over a decade ago
So for me, for larger things, i use Amazon to find which products i want and i hunt down the website of the store that makes it. For small stuff, or things that may be from a smaller site, or over seas i order on Amazon. I am sure the smaller sites need the boost even more, but Amazon gives me the extra layer of guarantee of satisfaction.
I use bookshop.org for books, some of the profits go to Indy bookshops.
Otherwise I use Amazon like a search provider, find the item I like then go straight to retailer or manufacturers website.
I try to avoid it. I only buy there what I can’t find locally, or elsewhere on the internet, or anywhere at the price. At this point, I probably purchase less than an item a month from Amazon, and I’m still trying to cut that down.
I normally try to find a niche site in my country specialising in the thing I’m trying to buy (like OP said in the last paragraph)
I do my best not to feed money unnecessarily into Amazon, because they’re well on their way into abusing their near-monopoly advantage.
I can’t change how the world treats a company that shrugs off news of their employees peeing in bottles, and doesn’t seem to care about heat exhaustion in their own staff. But I can control how I react to that news.
I use separate dedicated online retailers for groceries, hardware, and toys. I generally get free or very low cost delivery, directly to my door, within a week. My delivery timing is actually more reliable than it was with Amazon, back when I still ordered a few things from them, after they started enshitifying.
I’m generally always using a retailer who has a presence in my city, so if I need to return something, I just return it at the store.
The quality of the return desk experience is usually what determines which specific retailer I buy from, for each category.
(Which is ironic because I almost never need to return anything. I’m shockingly good at fixing stuff, so if I get something mildly broken, I just fix it and use it. But I really hate it if it’s a hassle on the rare day that I do.)
I haven’t used it for personal stuff in years. My employer uses it for office supplies, so I’ve occasionally ordered work stuff, but even that is as little as possible, and only things where it won’t matter if the quality is just so so, because you can’t trust that you’ll get the real thing anymore. Plus, I don’t want to sift through 10k listings of sweatshop garbage to find the thing I’m looking for.
I use Mercado Libre because in my country we no longer have easy access to dollars to buy in Amazon and they don’t accept our currency (I’m Venezuelan)
