I've come full circle and only order books (usually used) or things I don't care if they're Chinese bargain-version off Amazon anymore.
Target, or occasionally Walmart, gets what used to be Amazon's business from me.
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.