Your experience might be true in a big American city, but in Europe it's the complete opposite. Amazon is relatively fast (2 day shipping), but the grocery selection is limited and full of third parties charging extortionate prices. E.g. the same brand of nappies is 2x more expensive than getting it from Tesco. Anything specialty, such as musical instruments, PC parts, furniture, etc. is more expensive than getting it at the source, and all "cheap" items are 2x-5x more expensive than buying it from China, shipping included.

Amazon beats other shops in terms of convenience and selection (you can buy lots of random unrelated items and get them delivered fast), but often it's basically just a more upmarket eBay.

It's pretty great where I live in Europe in a country where they don't even operate. If I buy on Amazon.de, they ship products from Germany and items usually arrive within a week including going through customs, as they remove EU VAT and include local VAT at time of purchase (which probably clues you in to which country I live in). This avoids the massive customs processing fees, extra VAT, and wait times I would incur from most other international sellers.

Their prices are almost always the lowest I can find on books, similar to Book Depository which they also now apparently own. Other items like the small kitchen appliances I've bought on the DE site are also almost always cheaper than I can find in brick and mortar stores.

I'm not sure they have the same grocery service in most European markets that they have in the US, where as I understand it the grocery orders are handled rather separately with local selections.

I was curious about the lower prices you mentioned. And it isn't the case for items I usually buy.

For instance, my local grocery store has 2 liter Diet Coke Caffeine Free for $0.99 (on sale, sure, but it occurs like clockwork every 2 weeks), while Amazon Fresh has it for $1.74. Plain bagels are $1.99 at the grocery store, while AF charges $3.24.

Could it be the case that your local grocery store is simply overpriced?

I think "grocery store at the bottom of my elevator" was a give away, they have to be in metro area and the grocery store has huge markups due to real estate costs.

Same with me. The cheaper factor is just brainwash marketing machine or very short term campaign till people trust blindly.

Maybe you shop for different things? I've seen things lately that were clearly cheaper at the local grocery store.

For things like PC components, I find them hit or miss. They might be the cheapest (or near it), but they might also be way more expensive than another legit retailer. These days, I always check, because they are so variable. A lot of that is probably that Amazon doesn't carry everything, and other sellers are a crapshoot.

I don't know where you live that their groceries are so much cheaper, but it isn't true here in Texas, where HEB (the dominant grocery chain) is hard to beat.

This has been my experience-- I don't check Amazon and stop for almost anything at this point because I often find computer hardware might be cheaper elsewhere. Newegg is hit and miss but sometimes comes out way ahead-- I saved $100 on a monitor by going Newegg instead of Amazon, even after shipping.

Groceries? I find that Amazon almost never wins there compared to the local grocery chain. That most certainly is going to end up being a "where you are right now" kind of thing compared to computer parts.

Sales taxes are now collected.