It's ridiculous that I have to do this. It's saved my bacon twice (once literally with a computer). But the $5 tripod was worth every penny.
If not, then I see if I can buy it directly from the manufacturer's website. 80% of the time, I can (often with free shipping).
If that fails, then I check a small number of resellers that I trust. This mostly tends to be electronic components, so I'm talking places like Digikey.
If that fails, then it's off to the classifieds and eBay. Those bring many of the same problems as Amazon, but I very rarely have to go that far.
Online shopping requires returns. Removing that option significantly reduces trust and value.
I suspect the cost structure and consumer behavior has forced their hand to be more restrictive on retail (and perhaps they no longer care as much either).
Another behavior I started seeing a lot more of the past couple years was paid listings selling a product for 4-5x the normal price, mixed in with the organic results. The only purpose of those is to rip off people who are in a hurry or confused and miss that they are being taken advantage of. They must work often enough to pay for the ad placements and clearly Amazon doesn't have any interest in protecting their customers.