Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkhenry | Hacker News Reader

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It's not the mega conglomerates they are putting out of business. It's the bike stores, the hobby shops, the clothing boutiques. In the US with the purchase of Whole Foods, they are also moving more into groceries and everything else. After experiencing not being able at all to go to a high street and buy things and forcing everything to be online, I realized just how bad the experience is, and decided if I had to choose between the two I would choose the physical experience.

Once you do that you start to realize just how much of the consumer goods world Amazon has already put out of business. I live in silicon valley and there is no where I can go for electronics any more. My last amazon purchase was getting some 2.5A fuses because every store that would sell them locally has closed ( either before the pandemic, or because of it ). I tried to buy a video card, and the local computer equipment retailer literally couldn't get allocated any stock from the manufacturers, somehow Amazon managed to get first dibs on supply. I don't like that world, and I don't want to live in it.

This is really a bad example. What value do electronics shops add to a neighborhood? Maybe if you need something asap. Remember Radio Shack selling you phone chargers for $40? Do you miss them too?

I love local businesses in my neighborhood but only if they add value. Theaters, cafes, grocery shops, restaurants, book stores with cafe/events, places for kids, etc. Not an expensive electronics shop that I might visit once a year.

What there should be is a local store that stocks everything (rather than having to choose between one of 50 different specialised stores), and rather than self service from walking around the store, you simply ask the shopkeep to bring you what you want.

And then instead of having to go to that store, the shopkeep could even send someone to bring you the goods. It would be like the olden days.

> After experiencing not being able at all to go to a high street and buy things and forcing everything to be online, I realized just how bad the experience is

I have rarely been to a high street to buy stuff (rather than say a cafe or haircut) for 10 years. Imagine having to traipse somewhere, then actually walk around looking at random things on shelves hoping to find what you want?

I have been to large out of town shops like B&Q on occasion, the experience is better than a local hardware store, but still massively inferior to shopping online.

An auto parts store or Ace Hardware should stock fuses.

They should, but they weren't auto fuses, and Ace Hardware didn't sell them either. They were really small and specific to small electronics ( in this case a Honeywell desk fan that had a fuse in the plug ) Fry's would have had them, but Fry's is no more, and there isn't any other store like that anymore.

There's always DigiKey if you need something like that, which also happens to have a parametric search that's actually useful.

For your example, from the fuses search page (https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/fuses/139) you can apply the 2.5A, fuse type "Cartridge, Glass", mounting type "Holder" and still have a wide variety of options starting at $0.25 per fuse. No free shipping though.

But fast delivery on par with or better than Amazon in most cases.

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