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.