Small shops had superior experiences to Amazon even back in the 90ies. Never understood the appeal of Amazon. There's so much better options locally (NL), in matters of search, payment, website ease of use, shipping, etc. I hope for the rest of Europe and perhaps America bol.com expands ;)

Amazon here literally delivers the same day, or the next.

On the downside, many items are now Chinese fakes. So for brand products, I tend to not use amazon anymore, as it is basically a fake marketplace. If available, I always use the webshop of the company directly. Much less headache.

But in my experience it is usually cheapest, and no one can even touch the shipping time.

I wouldn’t necessarily hold bol.com up as the NL example (so many incorrect shipments, thing that take 2 weeks to deliver while labeled as “in stock”, etc). I’d go with Coolblue as the go to example.

In the US, Amazon trumps pretty much everything else with free 2-day delivery (and often, 1-day and even same-day) with Amazon Prime, and a relatively painless and easy return process and handling cases of mis-shipment.

Also, as one of the most popular stores, it has the most reviews on items like electronics. These reviews provide a lot of value (not the star-ratings, but actual reviews, where you can see what people complain about).

For things like photography equipment and musical instruments, I'd go to other stores (BHphoto/Adorama/GuitarCenter/Sweetwater/Reverb/Ebay).

This has gotten better for me.

Starting a few months ago, I now clearly see a indication if the item would ship to my country.

(also in Europe)