this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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The reality is that Amazon is the most convenient way to buy a lot of things, and as a result, people will put up with a lot of bullshit.
I genuinely try to buy things locally before I start looking online. It's increasingly difficult even for common items. The big box stores are shifting to branded only retailers. Where I used to be able to go to any hardware store and find a similar spread of items available, Lowe's, home Depot and Menards all offer their own lines of tools to varrying degrees. Menards is the worst about it, but they're all doing it.
Less common items are being phased out in stores, going to online order only. Where in the past you'd have your choice of just about any brand of thing you could think of in any store in any major town, now you're lucky to find certain things at all. And if I'm going to have to order it online anyway, Amazon has the best return policy.
Hobby or specialty items are easily marked up 300% locally. And you have to go to that specific store, which may require a fucking membership just to get an only marginally hyper inflated price. It's fine if it's one thing I need right now but I'm not going to pay for the privilege of shopping at a hobby shop. I'm at Costco every week and I'm salty about that membership. Jack Tanner's Leather Emporium isn't even getting my email address.
And frequently on Amazon it's not just the same thing, it's the exact same fucking product. Likely shipped to the hobby shop from Amazon. I get that these guys need to make a living, but bro, have a little respect for modern consumers. I'll pay a premium, I'm not signing up for anything and I'm not paying triple the price.
And even if you are resolved to buy online, and you try to go to the branded website to buy the specialty thing, Amazon has it, they have free shipping, and they'll get it to you tomorrow. But if you go to Rockler's website they're going to charge you 10-20 dollars to ship a single item, unless you spend more money, and it'll take two to three weeks to get to you.
I'm sorry, Amazon fucking won. Even if I say I'm willing to eat the cost, pay the shipping, pay a premium, and I'm willing to wait for the stuff I order, I'll even make an account at every shady ass website I want to order from and give all of them my payment information, regardless of how much I trust their security, because I know Amazon is a horrifically evil company, I'm a drop in the fucking bucket. So are you and anyone reading this.
It's just too fucking convenient. Too many competitors are cutting off the tail to try to keep up. They've won
What you've written is true, but none of it applies to ebooks.
Except we are talking about ebooks and none of what you've said applies to them. Amazon did not win in the ebooks department, as there are many other better platforms out there that don't fuck their people.
I do order from online stores quite a bit, but at least I minimize what data they have on me. For example, even before I started caring about privacy, I just happened to always receive the goods in the store's physical office and pay in cash (the former - because delivery to your door cost extra, the latter - because I was and still am uncomfortable using a card, especially online). That actually excludes the biggest Amazon-like marketplaces (we don't have Amazon itself, but have several similar ones), since they require prepaying for the order.
Recently I also started ordering without even interacting with the site - I just ask the cashier to order for me into this particular office, and decline when they ask for a phone number for the notification, saying I remember when to come and pick it up.