> Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore.

If you ignore shipping, maybe sometimes.

But I still find that 99% of the time, for items on Amazon.com that are sold by Amazon.com, it's cheaper on Amazon because of free shipping, while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping.

And even if you don't have Prime, the minimum for free shipping is just $25, and you can pretty much always add in stuff that you need to buy soon anyways (shampoo, paper towels, whatever).

And delivery times usually has zero to do with Amazon, obviously, they're best in class. With the pandemic and all, UPS and USPS are obviously straining in general. It's not like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, or any other online stores are any better. Despite their advertising, everyone knows you shouldn't be expecting UPS/USPS packages to be reliably arriving on time since March.

Just an anecdote, but Home Depot has lost its collective mind over shipping. Twice now I've ordered a single pack of 2 light bulbs for about $3 and had it shipped to my door for free.

I think other stores see what's happening and are trying to crowd in. Best Buy, too, seems to have no trouble shipping me anything I want for free. It'll take a week, but most of the time I don't really care vs Amazon's 2-4 days. And with Best Buy/Home Depot/etc I at least know I'm not getting a knock off.

>I'm not getting a knock off.

That is what has done it for me. Amazon has zero control over their inventory. I've gotten burned too many times at this point. Amazon is now a last resort or obscure items only retailer for me. That or I use it to find an item then buy it from the manufacture direct, funny how that has reversed from the old days.

I've even gotten unrequested refunds from amazon with a note about how the product I got was counterfeit. That's great and all but I needed the actual product not a refund and waste of time. Once you reach a livable income your time is worth much,more than saving a couple of dollars.

What are you buying?

I've bought 1,000+ items from Amazon over the past 10 years and exactly one item was counterfeit -- a camera battery from a third-party seller.

Honestly, worrying about counterfeits on Amazon, for items sold either by Amazon.com or reputable storefronts like Pharmapacks, just seems silly, it's so incredibly rare and easy to get fixed immediately with a single quick phone call to Amazon. And for third-party storefronts you've never heard of, it's no different than doing the same on Walmart.com or eBay.

It's easy to get counterfeit clothing, I'll tell you that. I'm confident that's happened to me a few times.

For electronics products, some reviews go into excruciating details on what counterfeit v real products look like.

Then some products literally explain how to avoid counterfeit products, especially the smaller producers of goods with niche products.

Finally there are articles in the press about it.

eBay has less of this problem because it's set up to select sellers based on reviews. Amazon's stores are more obscure, and often don't have many reviews, or sometimes you get an item fulfilled from a third party without knowing about it. I'm not sure if that still happens though.

Walmart lets you restrict search results to items shipped and sold by Walmart, whereas Amazon removed this option years ago.

Amazon removed it years ago because they do not want to be in the law margin retail business. They want to only be in the higher margin platform business. And that makes me not want to support Amazon.

Tools, Household Chemicals type stuff, tech parts.

Yeah easy to refund but I spent 2 hrs insect treating my house now I have to do it again, not a pleasant task. Oh yeah now I have a roach infestation because the traps were fake. The effects are much farther reaching than you make it out to be.

Is it very obvious? Is it more pronounced in specific categories? I keep hearing this, and I've never gotten an obvious fake, despite a large amount of Amazon usage. But maybe I've just been using fake stuff?

That said, I almost only buy the "shipped from and sold by Amazon.com" stuff, so maybe that's why. And if it's something that has obviously similar photos from a bunch of different "brands", I hop over to AliExpress to buy it at the source for 1/10 the price.

I wonder if there are a lot of people who go with the lowest price, don't even look at reviews, and are fine with FBA so long as it's cheapest. I order quite a bit off Amazon and just haven't had the counterfeit problem AFAIK.

My main concern is the non obvious fakes. The memory card that looks right but is slower than it should be or fails earlier than expected. The rechargeable battery that catches on fire. That sort of thing.

Or even worse, the knockoff toy with swallowable magnets that results in your baby needing surgery to remove part of their intestines: https://www.workingmother.com/mom-is-warning-others-after-po...

From https://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/amazon-dangerous-kids-pro...

> Twice now I've ordered a single pack of 2 light bulbs for about $3 and had it shipped to my door for free.

I can't tell if you think this is excessively bad or excessively good? Seems reasonable to me - they're just a couple of bulbs?

> I don't really care vs Amazon's 2-4 days

Isn't the big thing about Amazon is that it's next-day shipping? I don't live anywhere near a major city and Amazon still manage to deliver to me in about ten hours now.

You can't package and ship a parcel for less than $3 so they are losing money on small sales like that. It's clearly a loss-leading effort to compete with other online retailers.

Amazon free shipping has been terrible here. Weeks, at best unless you pay for the express options. And yes Walmart is better. One of my recent online purchases (cell phone screen protector) was estimated at 3 weeks delivery on Amazon. I bought the same item from Walmart.com instead and had it in 2 or 3 days.

Amazon's free shipping routinely delivers items worth a few dollars in about ten to twelve hours for me, and I don't live anywhere near a major city. Are you in some extraordinarily remote location?

Small-ish town (~80K) Midwest USA

Are we guessing? Parma, Ohio?

His point is easily seen if you go to the post office/fecex and try to mail 2 bulbs for $3 and see how far you get.

That's retail rates. Depending on the size of the bulbs, you could likely ship them first class for around $1.5. packaging might be another $0.20 assuming the bulbs are already in stuff boxes.

But still, not much room for profit. And from my experience, a lot of big box sellers will just put it in a huge box and pay a much higher rate than necessary for shipping.

I think the GP is implying that Home Depot might have lost money on the sale because the delivery probably cost them more than they earned from selling the light bulbs.

For Home Depot, assuming it's not a mistake, that's probably an investment in persuading customers to look to them first and not shop around.

I stopped ordering light bulbs from Home Depot as they always arrived smashed, and I had to enter the store to return them.

It’s a lot harder to smash LEDs though.

These were Cree LEDs. $10 each at the time

> while most others site charge $7-10 shipping or have a minimum of $75-100 for free shipping.

Target and Walmart both have free shipping for orders over 25/35 depending on which items.

Our local Target also offers drive up service where they'll load items into your trunk for you, and you can combine orders so you pick up $30 worth of items same day and get a $5 item (not in store) shipped free since the total is $35.

2 day shipping and 5% off with Red Card makes it a pretty compelling competitor to Amazon. Especially with all the fake/potentially unsafe items on Amazon, I prefer to get food related items from Target if possible.

The other thing is that, for a cheap item, especially one I'm reordering, Amazon takes me literally about 30 seconds to order something. Will I do some comparison shopping for a $100 item? Sure. I do order from other online sources as well but it's probably easiest to have a default whether that's Amazon or someone else.

To the parent point, even with 2-day delivery, most of the things I order aren't stuff I need right now. And the reality is that, normally, they'd have gone on a list where they'd have rattled around before I got around to going to the store with a shopping list. But, now, generally minimizing or at least reducing store trips, has reinforced the notion that a lot of in-person errands are pretty unnecessary given online options.

Target is always underplayed here. In many cases, you can have product pulled in 20-30m.

I was on my way to a meeting in Manhattan last year and it was pouring rain. I ordered an umbrella from the highway just north of the city, and had it in hand within 15m.

They makes me sad because Manhattan used to be a place where you could get an umbrella on very street corner without the bother of ordering ahead or entering a store

When I lived there, I thought that they sprouted from the sidewalks like mushrooms when it rained... Magical & a bit eerie!

Same here, very depressing to see how extreme, fake liberal policies have destroyed the city. No more street vendors, everything boarded up, no high class people paying tax anymore.

We need new leadership in NYC to fix this up!!

My comment wasn’t complaining about the lack of umbrellas in NYC. It was pointing out the really cool capability of Target.

I had to show up onsite in Midtown with a few hours notice, and was able to roll off the highway somewhere in Rockland county and pick something up rather than look around.

Without Prime the free shipping averages something like 2-3 week delivery times. It’s not like years ago before they made Prime. I tried ditching Prime; it’s painful. I still try to prioritize Target, Best Buy, etc. because I like having the option of the physical stores and easier returns.

Amazon is making this a lot easier now, too, with Kohl’s acting as return hubs.

I’m able to just drop off the item without packaging or label or really anything except my name and other info like the order number. Couldn’t be much easier (if you have a Kohl’s close).

I’m sure for areas that don’t have Kohl’s, they’re working on figuring out how to make returns as easy as possible (relative to the b&m experience).

They also do this "just show up with the item" sort of return system with The UPS Store, which is probably closer to some people than Kohl's.

(Allegedly you can also return to an Amazon Locker. Never tried that)

Non-Prime shipping is 5-8 days, usually faster. I think you are conflating "non-Prime" with "not Fulfilled By Amazon" which has delays before shipping.

That's just not true.

It's usually between 3-8 days. I used it for years and have friends who still do.

The first couple months of COVID a lot of stuff was taking 2-3 weeks but that was often true even if you had Prime. Then they hired tons more people and it stopped. Maybe that's what you're talking about?

I'm sure it depends on where you are located and what you're buying. I routinely see the free shipping estimates at 2-3 weeks these days for some things, but other things have 2-3 day shipping still. The longer times have certainly become more common than before.

I have a low tolerance for being fucked with, and a long memory. I have received enough broken, misrepresented, obvious returns-sold-as-new, etc. from Amazon that I avoid them most of the time these days. The one thing I still buy there is what they started with: books. Because there are no local bookstores anymore.

Supply chains as they are now, I think the MSRP of a lot of retail goods is significantly below what demand would dictate. As a result, a lot of things are only available at an inflated price from resellers, and not ‘sold by Amazon.’

In these cases, I’m willing to backorder from other retailers (or the manufacturer) and wait for their slower shipping.

I totally agree. I actively try other sources and unless you end up ordere $75+ at a site you're not going to get free shipping most of the time, and certainly not 2 day shipping which is almost always "true" to being 2 days.

The low minimum is what makes Amazon work, plus the same day shipping. Assuming that I do not take work time off to go get something, Amazon will deliver something faster than I can go get it if I order it in the morning.

Amazon also has clear quality and counterfeiting issues. I now purchase durable goods from the retailer's website rather than through amazon. My recent amazon purchase history is mostly consumables like snack foods and rice. Clothing, electronics, cookware, and almost everything else valuable gets purchased from somewhere else. This is also because the experience of shopping on amazon is extremely frustrating - they keep trying to force lower quality products on me instead of the things I want. It feels more and more like a digital walmart with fake brand names, sketchy products, and even sketchier fake reviews.

For example, a search for "snow pants" turns up products by Arctix and Outdoor Ventures. Outdoor Ventures is presumably a knockoff of Outdoor Research, a reputable cold-weather clothing brand. Outdoor Ventures seller page says their actual company name is "FUJIANSHENG SHANGFEI ZHIYI YOUXIANGONGSI". And Arctix is presumably a knockoff of Arcteryx, and seems to be owned by a very small financial services company in NY.

I rarely feel like I'm being presented with accurate or meaningful information when I look for things on amazon.

Are those really counterfeit? I understand they're knockoffs, and it's a shitty practice, but Arctix / Arcteryx is not a hidden difference in name - especially if you're searching for "snow pants" rather than the brand you want explicitly.

These specific examples aren't counterfeit. But wirecutter had a good breakdown of the breadth of counterfeit products sold on amazon.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-counterfeit-f...

Interesting, with the counterfeit problems the last things I would buy on Amazon are food items.

I find Amazon to usually have the best price, or quickly price match in case of sales. Even if higher, the I prefer the speed, convenience and reliability of Amazon. I know I get it quickly and any problems are sorted easily.

If it was that easy to beat them with just pricing then other retailers would've done it already. The only other company that gets close is Target which has vastly improved its online and digital experience.

Had the same experience here. Same day shipping has very limited availability here in Germany with a fairly limited inventory, most items are next day shipping. I ordered a product at 3AM with a huge text claiming "same day delivery when ordering within the next 5h". The order arrived at 8PM the next day, which was relatively annoying considering the same day arrival heavily influenced my purchasing decision.

I end up ordering from Amazon the things that Whole Foods, OfficeMax and BestBuy won't keep in stock. I moved recently, so we've been ordering 2-4x /week while getting the new place in order.

I buy locally what I can, but retail offerings are so anemic (even for, say, granola bars) that online options massively eclipse what stores carry.

I don't want to order from Amazon, but I don't want to get by with the meager brick-and-mortar offerings.

Another example: Recently I went to Best Buy to grab an HDMI-DisplayPort cable. They had it priced at $38. Amazon had it for $12. I'd have paid up to $20 for the retail stock surcharge, but that overage was obscene.

Cables have been this way for years for some reason, and it's not just Best Buy, it's the same here in the UK. Brick-and-mortar stores charge several times what you'd pay online.

edit I've heard they make more selling you a USB cable than selling you a printer.

Cables have been that way when I worked as a bestbuy black shirt 20 years ago

FYI, in the US, monoprice.com is usually the place to go online for cables, as long as you don't need them quickly.

A decade ago, I remember the experience from Monoprice being very fast. 1-2 days between ordering and having it delivered from Rancho Cucamonga to the Bay Area.

But earlier this month, I ordered something from them and it took 4 days to hand it off to some shipping company, 3 days for that company to deliver it to USPS, and another 2 days to get to my door.

Good if you need a lot of cables, if you just need one or two then amazon is still cheaper and you get it faster.

Cables is how best buy makes their money. They don't make anything on the TV you buy, its the 400% markup on the cable where the profit is.

People buy a TV. They need a cable. They comparison shopped and maybe bargained the hell out of the TV. They just buy the cable. I wrote an aticle about this ages ago: https://www.cnet.com/news/the-economics-of-cables/

> I'm finding I'm using Amazon less as more retailers go online and offer better prices. Rarely does Amazon have the best price anymore.

For me, I found this not to be true. I've been ordering gifts for people fleeing the company I work due to a merger and the changes, so there has been a lot. Literally everything I found on niche sites I found on Amazon for cheaper and at a faster delivery rate aswell.

Yeah, that's true. I also have send more things back, all the things they left in the rain or go back straight away.

Lately also more and more books are dented or damaged when they arrive so they get send back too. If I want a book that looks like second hand copies I would buy one of those.

The majority of my "next-day" and "2-day" orders have been late (often cancelled) for months.

Well, Amazon did say this would occur for non necessity items months ago because of the huge demand strain put on their system, which is exactly what this article is about.

Who cares? It's a competitive advantage they no longer have and less value for my expensive Prime subscription