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Comment by itslennysfault | Hacker News Reader

Reason #99,999 that I don't use Amazon anymore. Just buy stuff in-person, pay the shipping, wait the week, or whatever. You'll be fine I promise.

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Stuff in person costs 2X the price though. Especially bike parts.

It's often cheaper to buy from Amazon but never go through troubleshooting support. Always return or replace.

If that doesn't work, give a 1 star review, wait for the seller to come chasing you with a gift card in return for 5 stars. Change it to 5 stars, spend the gift card, and then change it back to 1 star.

As someone why buys a lot of cycling parts online, there are many mom/pop bike shops with web storefronts, that are very reasonably priced and often include "free" shipping. Stop giving bezos your money, you have no excuse.

Yeah.. lots of people keep repeating "but its expensive out of amazon!" and they never tried. Sure, you can find cheaper products on Amazon, but once you start looking around, it's definitely not always the case. But people are lazy, they get multiple amazon packages a week, and love to complain about Bezos but do nothing about it.

I bought a book on Amazon in 2005, it came (weeks) late, i complained, got sent another, ended up receiving 2 books. It was my last purchase from Amazon. Since then, the only time i see Amazon is on the backend of a scammer. Amazon in my opinion, in every sense, a scam itself.

First off, its just morphed from a book store into a upper class ebay. Alibabba became the chinese ebay. I'll pay that drop shipper the money, i got no problem with the conveince they give but realistically whats the point of going through 3 middle men when i can wait an extra week and limit that to 0 or 1.

Reality check:

I'm not exactly rich. When I'm a millionaire I'll happily support LBS.

Until then Amazon helps me save a shitton of money.

I got a pair of Continental GatorSkin tires from Amazon for 30% less than LBS just 2 weeks ago. And yes, I called LBS and checked the price.

Your local shop isn't the only option. The first online retailer (above Amazon in my Google search result) is €3 cheaper than Amazon, shipping included.

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/C1010429-P-Continental-Gatorskin-...

https://www.bike24.com/p2195136.html

+19.99 EUR and 10-14 days to ship to the US. Not cheaper.

Not to mention maybe another $150 in Uber rides waiting 14 days instead of 1 day for it.

Also Amazon gives me 5% cashback too so that also needs to be factored into all prices.

I used two European sites, since my comparison was obviously for delivery to somewhere in Europe (Denmark, in my case).

Ah okay, I though it was because these particular tires are in fact made in Germany ;)

But yes I think in Europe small businesses are much more of a thing. In the US it's very hard to get a better deal than from Amazon and these big companies, especially because they can super-optimize the supply chains across such a big country. Same is true in China.

Amazon is expensive. I once got an Amazon gift card and the first thing I told the person that gave me the card is that I will spend 20-30€ more on Amazon than on any other site.

As someone in Europe, Amazon would be the last place for me to look for bike parts. We have so many great options, including huge online retailers (Bike24, bike-components, bike-discounts, just to mention a few), all of which I've ordered many times from, and was pretty much always happy. Local bike shops may be more expensive, but then you support your folks, which might come in handy later, when you need servicing for something that you don't have the tools for...

The thing with bikes and bike parts is, details matter, two seemingly similar looking parts might be completely different, and there are many small parts that have many options (length, material, color, thread type etc). So unless you really know what you are doing, it's very easy to mix things up - that is true for the consumer too, of course :) Any non-bike-specific webshop is doomed for this reason, except for some special items, eg. eletronics.

One thing I noticed is that these days there are more and more small shops that are legit online, they may not be offering small parts, but I bought a bike from one such shop 2 years ago, and it was heavily discounted, the bike was exactly what they said it would be, it was in stock and was shipped within a week to another EU country no problems.

The reason I buy on Amazon is that finding anything you wouldn't see in a typical department store from somewhere else online takes a bit of effort; and it's an additional effort to gain some confidence that the "somewhere else" won't scam me, sign me up for even more spam, etc.

If there were some reliable meta-shopping site that aggregated trustworthy vendors, I would use that--but I can't see how to build one that wouldn't have all the problems of Amazon in the best case; and all the problems of wish.com in the more likely case.

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