Mildly Infuriating

There are people who sell products who are not affiliated with Amazon

Shocking I know

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.

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."

Ebay and Aliexpress seem to work just fine. I've only once ever ordered something from Amazon.

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.

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.

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'm generally fine with Amazon. The main things I'd like to see changed:

• Their determined nagging to subscribe to Amazon Prime. I don't have a good fix there.

• Perishable food. Walmart.com does a better job here IME, uses their existing infrastructure and delivery network to provide perishables in a tight time window.

• Limited product classification for searches. For electronics, Newegg does a better job of having a database with many aspects of products being searchable. In general, specialty rather than general-purpose stores seem to do a better job on this.

• Limited selection. Amazon is pretty darn good on this, but for some really esoteric stuff, Google Shopping can win, since it'll index the inventory of many retailers. If I can't find something on Amazon, that's my next stop. It can also search for numeric ranges ("3..25") as I recall, which can be useful for some items.

If you want an alternative for some reason, OP, you probably want to list what it is that you'd like done differently, as that kinda determines what alternatives make sense.

I've never used Amazon, so I really don't need a new one. Or the old one.

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 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.

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.

Google shopping or duckduckgo shopping can usually find it. Or go to amazon and then search the sellers name.

What kind of stuff have you been buying that you couldn't find elsewhere (at a competitive price)?

I buy a moderate amount of my stuff online and was able to almost entirely avoid Amazon this year. The only exception was a phone display where Amazon had a LCD-variant for ~30€ while all others only had an OLED for ~90€.

Amazon is convenient and two day shipping rules

But there is... Walmart.com in the US offers basically the same and often with 2 day shipping and in most cases same easy return.

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.

We need a new Amazon rain forest.

I've been going to Walmart more because of all the Chinese sellers. I fine with it if it's not on Temu for cheaper and if they disclose it's going to take three weeks to ship. It pisses me off to no end when they indicate it's going to take 3 or 4 days to get to me and then I check the tracking a couple days later to see a Chinese mail tracking number.

So try Walmart, if you want stateside stuff then use the retailer filter and select "Walmart."

Another alternative, if it's likely made in China or cheap, then check Temu. I've found things all over Etsy which is just crap bought from Temu and posted on there for double the price. And I mean they get the package, repackage it, and send it to you. No alterations or anything.

You can also look at ordering directly from manufacturers. Sometimes you'll get deals.

I personally use temu and I've had the same experience as amazon but for a far better price, my 60 dollar temu headphones had an almost studio quality microphone and metal frame

Also learn to solder and fix your own stuff to buy less, shave with a straight razor and razorblades and you'll save hundreds over the year in razors

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.

I tend to buy straight from vendors. like I ordered some underwear straight from Hanes the other day.