Personally, I've had pretty good product return experiences with Amazon's brick and mortar competitors recently. They know they're competing with Amazon, and they're trying to adjust accordingly.
My main point was that Amazon and the rest of the retail landscape has changed, and if you formed your view that heavily favors Amazon 10+ years ago, it's probably outdated and should be recalibrated.
I shopped almost exclusively on Amazon for a long time. I've been pulling back from it and have been finding that my old, harsh judgements of its competitors are no longer true. They've gone a long way towards catching up, and Amazon has been resting on its laurels or even regressing in the areas I care about.
> That's worth any minuscule price-disadvantage compared to competitors to me.
It's wrong to assume the price-disadvantage is minuscule, especially when you're dealing with marketplace sellers.
And the news media will always try to educate the unsavvy consumers; especially if it's an easy story to tell, like this one.
A lot of people, formed their impression of Amazon when it pretty much always offered a good deal (and didn't collect sales tax in the US). Many of them are still coasting on that impression, and shopping exclusively at Amazon in many categories under that outdated assumption.
I'm not a natural comparison shopping, so it took me a long time to figure out I can no longer I'm getting a good deal at Amazon anymore. I'm glad the BBC is reminding people to question their outdated decision-making assumptions.