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Comment by bsharitt | Hacker News Reader

Of all the "problematic" web giants, Amazon is probably the one I have the hardest time avoiding just because the value proposition is a so much better. Sure I can find the same products on other website at a similar price, but it's harder to get my money back if there's a problem shipping times are generally much worse. I have Amazon Smile setup to contribute to the EFF, but I'm sure it probably doesn't really make up for it.

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My experiences with Amazon in the last five years have taken such a sharp turn downward I take every reasonable opportunity I can to shop / do business elsewhere.

A huge fear of mine is in 20 years the competitive landscape is so homogeneous that I won’t even have that luxury.

I don't think you need to be too worried about that, young e-commerce competitors still pop up and seem to do well at taking a slice of the market. Shopify is larger than Amazon for my workplace, and Etsy is definitely getting bigger month by month.

I don't know if you're in the US, but I've found that traditional, physical-first retailers (Target, Best Buy, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond) have all of Amazon's good qualities and none of their bad ones.

You can get 2-day or same-day shipping from them now, and you can return directly to their store. They don't do inventory comingling, so you don't have to worry about things like getting bed bugs from sheets you buy or counterfeits.

You do lose the massive AliExpress-like selection of nonsense-branded Chinese products that Amazon has, but I find that I don't miss those.

Opposite experience for me.

The amazon marketplace is filled with scams and counterfeits.

I would rather pay a little more and get the product from a trusted source, or just go to a local store and buy it.

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