Yep, I avoid anything that's going to need a wall-wart power supply, I really don't need to wake up in the middle of the night to find out it's burned the house down. Some of the PSU's Big Clive[0] has dismantled and studied are downright scary.
I would not want to buy a first-party charger because I think they're way too expensive. However, I'm also not going to just buy the least expensive one, because as Clive has shown, they're unreliable at best and downright dangerous at worst.
But I've bought dozens of items from Monoprice and Anker. They have made a brand for themselves as being high quality and low cost.
Of course, the whole house of cards comes tumbling right down once the counterfeiters stop bothering to make 'App1e' chargers and start making 'Ankeer' and 'Moonprice' models.
Reminded model servos Tower Pro, who were sort of knock off Blue Birds (copy of their distinct blue colour). Cue few years later someone started making Toward Pro...
I bought some socks for example: for the price of cheap socks in a brick-and-mortar store I got some of the best socks I have ever owned.
I think AliExpress could do some really good bussiness if they were to add a QA person in the loop and would start selling 'premium' products under a different name. So far the median price/quality ratio of the things I bought has been very good (with a few duds, all gimicky electronic crap).
Link? :-)
Monoprice/ newegg for the other stuff.
The loss-leader strategy appears to have worked! I typically try to buy from Microcenter now when possible, and I almost always give back that $50 cpu/mobo combo savings in margin on the rest of the build (and then some) simply due to convenience.
This is interesting - my experience is that outdoor gear is one of Amazon's absolute weakest markets. I can't remember the last time they beat out my alternatives for backpacks, tents, etc.
There seem to be a bunch of factors in that. One is that buying offbrand is rarely a good idea (since you end up stress-testing everything), so people go for less-famous branded stuff instead. Two is that close equivalents aren't - I can buy any charger with the right voltage and plugs, but not any equal-size backpack. Three is that outdoor gear already has a lot of tiny-margin sellers; between REI, Campmor, MooseJaw, and ActiveJunky rebates there's very little room to undercut.
But, you still run the risk of being shipped widgets that will [combust|impale|disintegrate|other calamity]
Any random bin can contain books, food, electronics, jewelry, anything from anywhere as it gets picked from, restowed into, counted and recounted, etc. There's little room for quality control before items are available for purchase, because the system is optimized to get as many things listed on the site as quickly as possible. There are many ways in which the process could be made more robust, but it won't be because doing so would cost precious seconds.
The only way to avoid this is to by things only sold by 1 seller.
Pretty sure this has to do with the co-mingling people are mentioning which means you can’t be sure even if it’s coming from the brand.
NB - As they observe religious calendar/holidays both in store and online, make sure they're open before you visit.
B&H and Monoprice have been getting more and more business from me lately.
And for safety-critical purchases...no way am I risking buying something like angle grinder discs or fire extinguishers off Amazon. Fake headphones mean a bit of distortion, fake discs might mean a lost eye.
So now its just low-cost, low-risk purchases where I don't care too much if the item is junk.
On that note, where do people buy electronic hardware if not Amazon/PC World? E.g. for SD cards - Amazon carries the risk of counterfeits, and PC World carries the high street premium.