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I saw myself buying more and more from EBAY.

It is not perfect but mostly shipping is done by postal service that is ok for me and As Amazon there is no guarantee about products being genuine then E-bay is as good or more than amazon.

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The trouble with that is the eBay sellers that are listing directly off Amazon (with a mark up obviously) and essentially ordering the goods from Amazon as gifts. They keep this quiet as it's cheaper to buy it yourself on Amazon directly. It's becoming harder and harder to avoid the de-facto monopoly that is Amazon on ethical grounds.

It turns out you can buy most things from nearby retail stores. Not everything, but I haven’t needed to buy something online that often this year except niche or small publisher items

I had the same thing in mind when I ordered a gift recently, thought I'd see how Newegg matches up. I got my package 2 days later, the whole order had Amazon shipping slips/boxes, delivered by Amazon.

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