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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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.
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.
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.
It’s not hard, it just takes an extra step.
Is there some version of “hard” that’s not related to extra steps?
Yes… Something that’s actually difficult? I’m not sure what you’re asking.
Yeah but sometimes the only producers are QAMEQHEJAK and you can’t even find what real brand sells your thing. Or sometimes they don’t do direct sales.
That means you’re buying mass produced shit from China, the brand means nothing, and you’ll have better luck on aliexpress.
I do this, but be warned some companies use Amazon for fulfillment. I have ordered directly from manufacturer websites and still ended up with an Amazon package at my door. I just make a note to find a different brand if I ever need that thing again.
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.
I don’t live in the US but here Amazon is like a last resort if we can’t find what we’re looking for.
Idk, Amazon doesn’t even exist in my country
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’d honestly pay a bit more to buy from better vendors. Price, options, shipping aren’t the things why I end up using Amazon mostly (despite not liking it).
It’s the fact that if I need to return something I just click 2 buttons and no questions asked a guy shows up at my door tomorrow to pick it up and my refund is back in my account by the evening.
If other vendors started doing that without all the caveats and conditions and such, I’d never look back.
But not shipping. And sometimes, that’s the difference.
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.
I tend to buy straight from vendors. like I ordered some underwear straight from Hanes the other day.
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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.
Also, check your local library for “creator” services. Our local libraries have 3d printers you can either use, or have them print stuff for you for dirt cheap. Really, really cool service.
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.
I agree, but sometimes you just need some cheap shit. I’d rather pay 2$ for stickers for my kids than the same ones for 9$ on amazon.
I think the point behind made is that the stuff on Amazon is literally the same items. People buy off Alibaba / express and resell on Amazon… With a pretty good markup.
I see way more dropshipping on Amazon than before. It’s gonna end up just being a front for the chineese stores.
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.
Isn’t this what Etsy has tried to do? Miserably failed at it recently I think.
Wtf.
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.
but otherwise it’s local if possible, or direct from the vendor if not.
The problem I find is that local usually means “you’re gonna pay a lot more for the same item you can get shipped for free off Amazon”.
So, who am I benefitting? It’s a horrible consumer dilemma that I hate to be caught up in.
And it’s not even an “Amazon” issue. Our local bike shop, as much as I really do like to support them, sells tires for 2-3x more than what I pay to get them shipped in from an online bike store out of Germany (I’m in Canada!). Supporting local only works when local isn’t trying to screw you over.
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.
Yeah. Lots of places may just use the Amazon warehouse side of the business. Especially if they offer products on Amazon.
I take full responsibility for myself. I try to shop independently when possible.
