In the meantime, I've recently been experimenting with buying from other vendors for things I normally buy though Amazon, and with which I'd had trouble: particular brands of clothing, computer parts, water filter cartridges.
I've also been trying brick&mortar, and anecdotal results so far are that it's so-so or bad for selection, good for assessing quality and expected item and condition, and good for lead time.
Separate from browsing store inventory in-person, in-store pickup of online orders is consistently poor-to-ridiculously-bad so far (5 out of 5 times). The anecdotally worst major retailer thus far is surprising.
(Incidentally, I also realized, given the distinctive look of the Walmart shipping box in the lobby of a condo building of about 100 people, that I'd never noticed any of my neighbors buying from Walmart before. I suppose there's some stigma and general objection to Walmart to overcome, though Amazon hasn't been doing so great on reputation either in the last couple years. My two Walmart orders thus far have been wholly positive experiences.)
Clothes, shoes virtually all can be bought directly from the manufacturer (well the brand owner.)
E-commerce outside of Amazon has improved greatly. I can’t even think of the last time I had a problem ordering from another e-commerce site besides Amazon. I order food from lots of different sites and I wouldn’t dare do that from Amazon anymore.
Heck, I've had Best Buy associates whip their phone out and price check something without me even asking. I was super surprised because "don't price match unless the customer asks" would be the easiest thing for management to push for.
I increased my loyalty a bit after seeing that.
Shady to say the least.
People frequently mistake a similar but not identical product and ask for the better product for the price of the lessor. Ex foobar-a is 199 and foobar-b is 179 at both current store and amazon. Customer searches for foobar on amazon and demands the foobar-a in hand for 179, the price of foobar-b on both merchants.
People google search a vague search term like foobar. This completely avoids bothering to discriminate between new identical products, used junk, data wherein google is just wrong about the price, auctions, sales in which the price is theoretically better but the shipping is adjusted up instead of raising the price. Ex: $20 with $30 shipping. This is usually a great indication of a scam because the shipping is non refundable.
This is especially annoying when the customer is in line with a bunch of other customers staring daggers at their back. Especially fun when its an item from the current store that is obviously not identical and the customers phone informs them that this product is not sold in stores. One wonders how they think they came to have it in their hands.
Even in the case where the product is billed as a new in box item sold by random bob34343 its truly NOT an identical transaction.
Imagine you are buying foobar for $99. What you are receiving is a handy retail environment in which to come pick up the item immediately with staff with a minimum level of knowledge on hand to help you find and select your merchandise not to mention unload, order, clean, maintain and manage the environment needed for this to happen even if you prefer to select your own.
If the same product is available from Amazon for $89 with "free" (that you pay for monthly) 2 day shipping, that actually takes 3-4. You are paying slightly less for that item but you are receiving it days later from a less reputable seller that is MUCH more likely to screw you over wherein replacement if something is wrong will take at least another 4 day turn around before you have a working product in your hands.
If you are standing in the store with the product in your basket you are tacitly acknowledging that the above that the in store experience, ability to exchange or return in store, the trustworthiness of the merchant is actually worth $10 and indeed none of those things are free to the merchant.
You just want to have your cake and eat it too.
Whose cake am I eating exactly? Best Buy is being rewarded for value and trustworthiness and Amazon loses out even though I'm a Prime member due to their recent failings. Its the market doing its self-correcting market things.
The point is that its cheaper on average Amazon to ship a 1000 ps4s of which 100 are used and 50 are broken than it is for best buy to maintain a retail presence and sell 1000 actually new ps4s.
You are insisting on the superior product but only willing to pay the cost of the inferior one.
This is only sustainable in terms of throughput at checkout or monetarily because most people unlike you aren't willing to do this with everything they purchase.
It's like a person that finds something to complain about regarding their meal to get free food. If everyone did it then either the restaurant would go out of business or they would stop giving away free food.