Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.
Have you seen what they do in China too get those rare earth minerals needed for electronics and batteries?
Adorama is also good and, like B&H, you can't do any business with them on Saturday.
By the way the remnants of Toys R Us are now owned by Tru Toys and they are looking to make a comeback.
What does that mean in practice?
Buy the company with loans, strip the tangible assets for cash, burden the company with the loan repayments and bail out.
Basically use the company as leverage to buy it, and then make it pay for having been bought out. It will seldom be able to do so, and eventually will stagger into bankruptcy. Both the company and the creditors lose, but not the 'investors'.
If anyone never quite "got" the rancor directed at Mitt Romney for his association with Bain Capital, this should clear it up.
After a few months of lackadaisically making sporadic attempts to order an RTX 3080, I finally threw in the towel and ordered a prebuilt machine which will come with whatever brand 3080 card is in stock at the time from Newegg. I could really use the CPU upgrade anyway, and the markup on the parts isn't at all bad compared to the markup from scalpers, who I refuse to do business with on principle.
The reviews on Newegg at least seem not-gamed. They're largely, "Quality parts slapped together and shipped unprotected, so I received the box with cards and RAM modules unseated and case parts bent due to being thrown around during shipping." I'm going to end up merging parts from two systems to produce a watercooled variant anyway, so all I really care about is just getting the parts, in particular the 3080, at this point.
Fwiw you still run a risk that the CPU heatsink or something similar will come dislodged during shipping, and tumble around inside like a wrecking ball, smashing up the CPU, 3080 and the other parts you want to keep.
I learned this the hard way. There's a difference between how computers like Dells that are designed for mail order are made, vs modular DIY ones. The interior parts of the former are more strongly locked down inside. They're more likely to be non-standard and difficult or impossible to upgrade, but that's the cost of making them UPS-proof (United Package Smashers).
Also if you're looking for Chinese knockoffs.. go directly to the source and go with Aliexpress.
Getting something in two days instead of two months and being able to get a refund if it was completely misrepresented is easily worth, say (as an example from today), paying $50 for an IP cam instead of $40 from Aliexpress for something with firmware so butchered from upstream it doesn’t even fulfill basic requirements or provide listed functionality anymore. And being stuck with it.
At least the firmware is so full of security holes I can probably find some use for the device one day when I feel like spending another evening with it.
That's it. Instacart, Shipt, Seamless (yes, I've bought groceries through Seamless in NYC...), this is all I want from you: let me know what I'm getting.
I got a shirt from Macy's with sewn in stripes that started to unravel before long, this was many years ago, but I never bought clothes from there again.
And more recently, I got pillow cases from bed bath & beyond, that were very expensive, but otherwise exactly what I wanted, and the seams started coming undone.
Amazon is not a reliable brand, but on the other hand, one can justify trying it again and again, because it is not a single (tainted) brand.
I've said before and will say it again, I read the reviews starting with the worst, as if all the five star reviews were always all fake. I don't know what they might have been for your products, but usually I see no connection between the best reviews and the useful information in the worst.
If I order from Amazon, from Amazon, I tend to have good experiences. If I order third party from Amazon it’s a crap shoot.
Also there is text on the page showing you who the item is sold by, and who it ships from.
Sometimes it's easier to just make a list and physically go to a store so I don't need to question whether or not what I'm buying is legit and deal with that stuff.
Both Amazon and Walmart are not reliable vendors. Costco does still vet all it's products, I will probably just use them from now on.
This Christmas I even got an echo show from them when Amazon itself was back ordered past the holidays.
What they are doing much better at now is the hybrid e-commerce/brick and mortar that Amazon is struggling with. Whole Foods helped give them a platform, but Whole Foods are nowhere near as prolific as Target/Walmart/Best Buy.
For all the reasons mentioned throughout this post, Amazon has gone from my first stop to far down on the list when looking to buy something.
IMO buying the cheapest products on Amazon is like using disposable plates and utensils, sure the one time purchase is cheaper than buying dishes and real utensils, but over time it's way more expensive.
Honestly, opening a package from Amazon for a 5 star recommended item that you had high hopes for only to find a cheap piece of garbage is infuriating.
I’ve noticed this too, except it’s mostly with health and skin care brands that are trying to use Amazon for free advert / discovery and then push users to their site with lower prices and no Amazon take. I view this as a scumbag move by the vendor myself and find a new product from a vendor not doing this.
If you don't get support while they're still actively selling YOUR widget, good luck.
Obviously it isn't perfect but it does help.
In essence, I don't care that much about the reviews. There are fewer of them, and they usually talk more about factual aspects of the item. There are very few "1 star, this is total garbage" type reviews because the retailer has filtered much more of the crap out.
What’s this then?
However, I think there are some instances where Amazon probably rearranged large numbers of reviews because they found out the reviews were for a different item. It's likely that Fakespot can't tell the difference between mass censorship and legitimate removal. So you do have to take the results with a grain of salt and read recent reviews.
Whereas since Fakespot etc are less popular, there's less reason to evade their detection algorithms.
That said, yeah, it sure seems like amazon's doing an awful job for consumers in this area.
It's tiring using Fakespot just to find dozens of D and Fs. For the most part, I use other retailers or just don't buy the item (surprisingly it's a zen option to not buy stuff you don't pressingly need).
[a]: Complaints. Reviews. Etc.
[b]: Not excusing their bad behavior. Just stating the reality.
For instance, Goodthreads is one step above Amazon Essentials for clothing.
They answered questions by phone before we purchased. I received a keyboard for my daughter, then we had a change of heart and decided we had gotten the wrong one, they handled everything for shipping it back and sending a new one, and called a week later to see if we were happy.
Between late deliveries, bait & switch 5-star reviews, and being able to find cheaper prices elsewhere, I now only use Amazon if I can't find a product anywhere else.
I usually go somewhere (anywhere) else besides Amazon because I have had bad experiences in the past, but this was the only place I could find the niche keyboard because it's an older model. I now have a firm rule that I will never order from Amazon again.