I avoid Amazon. Deleted my account years ago. They treat their workers like shit, don’t pay their taxes, extract wealth and send it overseas, pollute like there’s no tomorrow, but most importantly, Jeff Bezos is not a nice man.

My shopping happens mostly online, at farmers markets and local stores.

I’m avoiding Amazon for many years now. To be fair I usually just… Don’t buy things?

But when I have to, I try to go local shop first, second hand websites/markets, other websites and eventually Amazon, I guess? It never came to this.

I have spent 10/20% more than the price on Amazon though.

Last but not least, for niece stuff I have used Amazon as a sort of catalogue to find out what exists and then look for things further by other means.

Amazon is always the first place I check whenever I want to buy anything. I order frequently enough that Prime more than pays for itself every year, and I hate making new accounts on new websites to order anything elsewhere unless it’s just not available on Amazon.

I don’t like that it’s this way, but it’s the most cost-effective way of shopping for me.

If you keep picking a single replacement for the big corporation that conveniently carries everything, you’re just following Southpark’s wal-mart pattern. Take two extra seconds and see if you can buy the product directly from the manufacturer’s website, some other niche/specialty retail site, or from a brick & mortar store down the street.

I use it out of laziness. Despite all the shit they still have great customer service. About a year ago I ordered a £150 multi-tool and they accidentally sent me a £200 reciprocating saw. Due to a complicated living situation at the time it would have taken me about 6 months to send the wrong tool back so they just said I could keep it and refunded me so I could buy the other tool again.

The other thing I like is that I’ll just see a price and buy it easily. I’ve often shopped around and found something cheaper but then the whole purchasing process is terrible. They add on a bunch of extra costs, then make me create an account, then add on more costs. By the end I could’ve paid less and got it quicker from Amazon. Not always the case but it happens often enough that I will just go to Amazon half the time.

But I guess the main reason is that I hate being forced to create accounts and so many shops require that for no good reason.

Yes. It’s the only big tech that I use by choice. It’s too damn convinient, and it makese feel guilty that I’m so reliant on it.

We ditched Prime a few months back after they pulled the adverts fuckery with Video. It wasn’t a terribly difficult decision, what with buying less and less from Amazon over the past couple of years.

What it has highlighted though, is how effectively Amazon has fucked our high streets. You want boot laces? Then your options are one chain store or online somewhere and that’s it. Which I guess has made me more mindful of what I’m buying.

I have successfully almost completely cut Amazon shopping out. We would spend hundred of £s every month and would buy everything off Amazon. But the company is terrible (mistreating workers, avoiding tax, etc etc). They’ve allowed their site to get flooded with (low quality) trash. Reviews are unreliable. Prices are comparable or more expensive to elsewhere. I do still buy from there once in a while for quick delivery and easy returns.

Alternatives:

eBay - sucks for product reviews, but is good if you know what you’re getting (e.g. something branded). Delivery is through the post rather than mistreated delivery drivers needing to piss in bottles. I managed to help a hospice by buying excess stock it had via eBay. Also I’m starting to get everything I can secondhand. Makes shopping cheaper and it’s better for the environment.

HotUKDeals - a sales sharing website that links through to other small retailers with good bargains. I find stuff here frequently and always search this site first when I want something.

Overall I’m buying a lot less stuff and I’m really happy with that.

I’ve been boycotting Amazon (UK) for a few years now. It’s not easy! Sometimes it doesn’t take much longer to source items, but other times it takes way longer. I have limits though, and occasionally I end up caving-in and just using Amazon, but it’s getting rarer all the time. Now I use them once or twice per year. I tried using onbuy for a while, but we got a couple of faulty items from them and their support completely ignored me, so I stopped using them. Generally, here are some of my most common alternatives:

general stuff and gifts: Argos, ebay, etsy
tech: overclockers, ebuyer, scan.co.uk
electronics: John Lewis, AO, Richer Sounds
books/dvds: hive.co.uk, Waterstones, WH Smith
pharma: boots, simpleonlinepharmacy, well
household: Robert Dyas, Dunelm, John Lewis
pets: zooplus
spare parts: buyspares.co.uk

And for a wishlist alternative I use wishlist.com. (edited to fix formatting)

Good for you for avoiding Amazon when you can.

I haven’t used Amazon in almost a decade now. The biggest tip I have is just avoid Amazon links. I block them from my search results, only go there if I think they might have a part number that I need to reference.

My next step is to reflect on whether I really need the object, and if I really can’t, then I’ll contact the manufacturer directly at their homepage. A couple of times the object has arrived in an amazon box, but I can’t control that.

Finally, I am cool with shipping taking a reasonable amount of time. I would prefer to wait a bit for my object than support the amazon monopoly.

I do for many things. It’s just convenient and their logistics muscle at this point is wild.

That said, I will go to first party online stores for things like hardware most times. It’s often just cheaper and delivery is about the same.

An interesting observation: Back when I lived somewhere else there was a local alternative, because it was a country far enough out of the way that Amazon didn’t directly support it, and it’s interesting that the local alternative wasn’t meaningfully worse at the logistics or availability. Amazon’s existence does, in fact, heavily suppress competition. You don’t need to be as big as they are to do what they do, it’s just impossible to do it if they’re already there.

For people in Germany or Austria, Geizhals is great. It shows you the cheapest seller for every product and has a ton of information for each product that you can filter by.

I do, because the combination of speed and cost matter to me. We don’t have a lot of other options in Australia, certainly none that can come close to Amazon’s performance in this space.

Not for about 3 years now.

I took a stand against their horrible practices and frequently pay more for goods I could find there cheaper, plus arrive faster.

There’s no Amazon where I live right now, but if I were to return to an Amazon country, I’d probably use it again. The convenience is hard to beat.