Evil Amazon

[JimC]

They'll prise my Kindle from my cold dead hands...

(and the chances of that have gone up rather significantly since January... )

[Sean Hayden]

Amazon has become a shithole. They've already kicked off 3,000+ sellers for price gouging, and I don't think they've scratched the surface. Besides price gouging it is now full of every asshole who's bought into the get rich online myth trying to sell crappy product at insane prices. You have to wade through so much crap the shopping experience is no longer worth it. Add to that the possibility that Amazon is engineering your experience (your attempt to "shop") and it's potentially much, much worse...

[Svartalf]

did not notice... then again, I'm normally never shopping for anything else than books or dvds

[Sean Hayden]

Yeah, kindle is awesome. I don't buy the hard stuff from Amazon, but I've used them for many other things due to excellent shipping. But now they're flooded with sellers making it more like an Ebay. This is probably inescapable going forward as other retailers have joined the trend.

[laklak]

I still use them, but when I shop I usually know exactly what I'm looking for. I only buy Prime stuff fulfilled by Amazon. I'm also a fanatic researcher, I'll look for days for the right kind of varnish or stainless steel screws across many sites. Amazon usually has the best prices, but not always.

[Sean Hayden]

I've always suffered a bit from the fact that I tend to want relatively uncommon things. But lately I'm more frustrated by the volume of cheap shit being unloaded by too many people.

Everyone can go directly to China to have their label slapped on a product, and they are.

[JimC]

I'm buying very little in the way of "things" these days, apart from food and alcohol. I've got the weekend papers and NewScientist delivered, and I've got Evil Amazon to get me new Kindle content...

[Hermit]

In the past ten or so years I have made over 1000 online purchases from dozens of sites, but not a single one from Amazon. I do look at their offers. All too often the price of the product is attractive, but the delivery cost kills the deal. I'm not buying a DVD for $2.95 when the delivery charge is $25 or more. My guess is that Amazon took a cut from the purchase price, but not from the delivery charge, so sellers deflated the former and inflated the latter.

Also, after the Australian government insisted that every purchase made overseas must have the GST (10%) added on, Amazon refused to deliver to Australia for quite some time. I had no such problems with Ebay.

[pErvinalia]

I just bought a monitor cable on ebay for $6.75 that costs $49 at Jaycar. Jaycar's would be better quality, but sheesh.

[Tero]

Cds/DVDs is the only thing I can buy from Finnish sellers. The shipping is a few euros. Books are too expensive to ship. And the on line seller of Finnish books is in Sweden. They still sell a lot of paperbacks at news stands and shops in Finland, not on line.

[Hermit]

Cds/DVDs is the only thing I can buy from Finnish sellers. The shipping is a few euros. Books are too expensive to ship. And the on line seller of Finnish books is in Sweden. They still sell a lot of paperbacks at news stands and shops in Finland, not on line.

https://www.betterworldbooks.com/ is an excellent source for OOP books, though it probably doesn't have a lot of Finnish titles. They are obviously mostly second hand, ex library etc. Prices are excellent and delivery inclusive.

[Scot Dutchy]

I use two companies for almost everything. One is called Cool Blue where I buy electronics and the other is Bol.com for the rest. Both are well known for the excellent working conditions they provide for their staff.

[Brian Peacock]

I signed up to eBay for the first time this week. Almost as soon as I did so the seller withdrew the item I was interested in. So I deleted my account.

[Scot Dutchy]

We have a Dutch eBay here called "Marktplaats". Its reputation has sunk to 0 because of defrauders. I would not go near it.

[Svartalf]

I signed up to eBay for the first time this week. Almost as soon as I did so the seller withdrew the item I was interested in. So I deleted my account.

visited ebay somewhat and bought a few things there, but that was two decades ago, when online payment did not pose me difficulties. must admit that the auction principle always bothered me.