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.
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.
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.
