Not a single comment with an ideal alternative, despite best efforts. We need a fediverse Amazon alternative. 😞
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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If I need something bad enough, I start within my range of locality and then work outwards. Like for instance, I'm currently looking for a full set of seat covers for my car. If I were to use Amazon, wham bam I'd get the cutest ones by tomorrow. But instead Ive been looking up the availability of the auto goods stores nearby for delivery or pickup. That way i can go see the quality with my own eyes.
If there aren't any cute or affordable seats covers nearby, Ill end up going straight to the websites of the manufacturer qhile cross referencing whatever reviews i can find online. A lot of times the manufacturer or distributor website will have coupon codes at checkout. And yes, the websites can be seedy, but I have in the past gotten some really high quality products from sus websites that like never sent me a confirmation email.
Sometimes there are really specific or niche things that seemingly almost only are on amazon, (like my damn vaccuum filters that dont exist anymore,) about 99% of the time youll find them on ebay too.
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I’ve never used Amazon. eBay is pretty much where I get what I want and that has been true since 2004 according to my account.
Why eBay? I understand getting deals on used stuff but it seems like anything newer is usually overpriced.
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While I don’t put enough effort into it to really make a difference, I’ve had decent luck using Amazon to narrow down a search, then purchase from a company’s store.
Of course that’s quite possibly Amazon also
Yeah lol a couple of times I've tried to do this only to get to the cokpany's site and see "pay through amazon" in the checkout
Before searching I am asking myself 10 times "do I really need this" and I compare caracteristics ans prices on various websites (this process can take months), I check references about sellers and items, then I prepare myself to buy it but at this step I forgot I wanted/needed this, or it does not answer my need, in 80% cases.
Buy directly from the seller. Due to most people using Amazon the past decade, created a modern shipping infrastructure. Everyone has similar shipping pricing and timeframes. Amazon doesn’t provide anything special now. Other big box store just use their stores as shipping hubs like edge computing. There’s a lot of same day delivery.
When Amazon started it was next day delivery, now a lot of stuff is two days.
What are you talking about? Amazon started as an online book store in 1994. They were not doing next day delivery, that's for sure. Amazon had a big push for "Prime 2 day delivery" for a long time, but from my anecdotal experience it's more than often longer than two days. Sometimes they offer one or two day shipping, but it's not the norm.
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A lot of that is also Amazon, but an individual can only do so much
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Even though mom and pop stores are mostly dead, Amazon's market share is thankfully still relatively contained where I live. So it's still simply a matter of just picking a different "big box store" to order your things from.
aliexpress has most of the same stuff from amazon, just without the sellers nonsensical name slapped on it.
For more important stuff, most brick and mortar shops have an online storefront nowadays.
Idk, Aliexpress has plenty of the nonsensical names still. At least on the product listing, often the name isn't bothered to be put on the product itself. However, for American's Trump is wanting to handicap the de minimis for China.
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As someone who needs tall sizes, I long ago gave up on most stores selling anything that fits me. However using their online stores, I’m discovering that many still can have tall sizes, if I’m patient enough
I've always considered Amazon a store that mostly Americans use. Personally I've always just used eBay and Aliexpress myself.
I used to use eBay as well, before I was scammed, and eBay did absolutely nothing. On top of that it was impossible to reach a human. Ever since I never felt comfortable buying from there, knowing that if the automated service page can't help me then I'm just fucked.
I once had a problem with amazon, a 100$ item was missing from a package, and after talking to a representative for 10 minutes they completely refunded me.
Amazon is monopolistic, and evil, but in my experience have excellent customer service.
It's very easy in Sweden - there are plenty of e-commerce alternatives present, and you can use a comparison website to find the best price for any given item.
For various cycling gadgets and other cheap stuff, I've started ordering on AliExpress, with a pretty decent success rate so far.
Generally I don't buy shit I don't need. Most shit I want but I don't really need I can find it in a brick and mortar shop. For everything else I try to go to the source or a specialised seller as close as possible to where I live.
Easy, in Switzerland we don't have amazon (there are only a few sellers that send to Switzerland. We only got Galaxus and other shops.
Reminds me of a thread I saw here a while ago on "What if advertising were illegal?"
I've found the best method for reducing my need on Amazon is to just buy less crap. Online shopping is simple because you can get stuff immediately, but I don't think anybody "needs" 3-4 new products per week.
Aside from that, I try and support local: find local shops that sell items similar to my style, or trust word of mouth for online retailers that are good. At the end of the day, as long as you're buying good-quality stuff (which oddly seems to spend less on advertisements) it doesn't really matter where exactly you buy from, as it's all pretty similar in price / quality.
Easy ... we don't really have Amazon.