Hacker News Reader

I think it's a combination of Amazon murdering any competitors that can work at scale, Germany's general conservativeness around payment systems, and not-so-great shipping companies (when we lived in Germany, companies like GLS and Hermes were really bad).

In The Netherlands and we have a healthy ecosystem of larger retailers (Bol.com, CoolBlue, etc.) and smaller local shops. Everyone uses the same frictionless payment system (iDEAL) that just works with your bank account and is supported by all Dutch banks. Most companies have next-day delivery, many companies do so if you order between something before 22:00 or 23:00. Bol.com has same-day delivery for some products when you order before 12:00. Some shipping companies also deliver on Sundays, etc.

The conservativeness in Germany really jumped out at me: people still prefer paying cash (can't remember the last time I used cash outside Germany), lot of people hated internet banking (not sure if it's still the case now, but certainly was in 2018 when we left Germany), there are no store openings on Sundays, etc.

(Disclaimer: I lived in Germany)

I don't live in Germany but hate internet banking and de-letterization and other "digitalization" because it's first step in erosion of rights. The second step is forbidding the offline version.

Germany is still one of the rare places where it's totally fine to buy a Porsche with cash. There was a good article (missing the link, sorry) how the Italian mafia uses this loophole to launder money.

And another thing is credit cards in restaurants. We just had a big dinner with friends, were the last ones to leave from the restaurant. They advertised credit card payment, but for some reason the machine was not working when we needed to pay and we went to the ATM to get a pile of cash. It's not the first time this happens and not the first restaurant either. I've never had issues paying with card in any other country.

To contextualize: As it is now dealerships and any other merchants have to document buyers (by showing id) purchasing with cash above 10k€ and may ask for proof of origin of the money.

In 2027 all cash purchases above 10k€ are forbidden due to EU law and purchases above 3k€ have to be documented.

A law putting an (reasonably low) upper limit on what you can buy with cash is quite draconian

Cash is the only anonymous (and widely accepted) payment option left. There's already certain regulations in place (revolving around ATM limits, buying noble metals, proof of origin, identification on payment, etc) and they're gonna get updated in 2027 with new EU regulation, so the outlook is not great on that front.

And no store openings on sunday is one person's consoomerist nuisance and another's day off. And before you say, they'll get another day off, consider the value of having synchronized leisure time.

> if online shops would collaborate on a system allowing a single user account to be used to buy items across multiple stores, it would massively lessen the friction. If they could also figure out a way to compete somewhat on the cost of shipping, that would also help.

This is basically how Allegro and Erli work in Poland. It's a platform that arranges the catalogue, shipping, payment, returns, etc. but (most[1]) items are listed and sold by individual companies that manage their own stocks in their own storage. Of course they take a cut for every purchase. For consumers there's a yearly sub that's priced just like Prime and makes most shipping free.

[1] Allegro has their own stocks that are promoted in a bit trust-y way but I digress.

And not only that, the network of paczkomats where one can get their package 24/7 from a box which is <500m away from your home allows anyone to compete. I would go to x-kom.pl for computer stuff, mistama.com for Bosch devices, empik.com for books, euro.com.pl for electronics. If I don't know the particular store, I either use allegro.pl as a catalogue or just compare prices on ceneo.pl to get to a small store directly. Most such small stores seem to use some popular platform for selling stuff, i.e. the login page is almost the same, so it's not a burden for them to set it up. I get anything next day in a paczkomat next to me. I would never go to amazon.pl. Why would I even?

I disagree with this. Amazon is filled with so much shovelware that it's virtually unusable for anything that isn't branded. And products which are (e.g. tech, like a laptop or TV, but not a USB cable), I just search on the local price comparison website, and the cheapest is often not Amazon.

I disagree on all counts.

I quit using Amazon a few years ago. For almost all goods, there are other German online retailers that are as convenient, for the same or better prices. Having to sign up for them is a small price to pay for not having to deal with Amazon's "search" function. Plus, many stores implement account-less Paypal/GPay/APay checkout.

The only thing I use Amazon for these days, is weird Alibaba imports that are not available from reputable stores. But even there, Ebay or Alibaba itself are usually more convenient.

As I said elsewhere, the problem with German retailers is when something goes wrong, and you need to deal with the German customer service. They think customer is worth nothing and are really rude when you discuss with them. Amazon just says ok, send it back (for free, show this QR code in the shop around the corner), here's your money.

In a chat.

In many languages if needed.

I'm trying to quit Amazon as well. Any German online retailers in particular that you can recommend?

I came across this list which seems like a good place to start: https://codeberg.org/phranck/Amazon-Alternativen

Not a retailer, but Geizhals is pretty nice for several product categories, best filter system I've seen thus far.

> For almost all goods, there are other German online retailers that are as convenient, for the same or better prices

My experience is totally opposite. I use Idealo to compare different prices for any purchase over €50, and 90% of the time it shows that Amazon has the best offer.

The seller may not always be Amazon, often it's someone else, but if something goes wrong I'd rather deal with Amazon's 24/7 support than a small shop. Amazon's support has helped me resolve my issues in just 5 minutes or less multiple times, and with small shops — I encountered a few of them that only reply to one email per week, they simply aren't competitive.

Email? You should've called, or sent a letter to them... Who answers to emails anyhow... </sarcasm>

You're right! Next time I'll try faxing them instead /s

I guess you just have more patience with internet search (I find hunting down a specific product on a variety of 3rd party sites far slower and more frustrating than Amazon's search), expensive and slow shipping, and the frustration of oftentimes entering your various details agaaaain into another retailer's online system.

It's odd to argue that, despite all of this relative challenges being pretty objective, you find this approach "as convenient".

(And I never said Amazon is cheaper, although as noted elsewhere, it's often very competitive.)

> - if local shops all used a single stock-taking system that also allowed live location-aware item searches, it would be a game changer. Imagine searching for an item you want and knowing, for sure, there was one in stock in a local shop, and the price. (My belief is many people would love to shop locally if it wasn’t such a PITA.)

They kind of made something similar in France with a network of independent libraries. It's still a far cry from the Amazon UX because for the ~6 physical books a year I buy, there's an issue half of the times. Like, it says on the portal that it's in stock in this library, you pay for it, then the next morning they send you an email telling you that they don't have it in stock actually. So you either have to wait at least a week for them to get it in stock, or you have to cancel the order and go in another library where it's actually in stock, after they checked by directly contacting them by phone...

> - If they could also figure out a way to compete somewhat on the cost of shipping, that would also help.

Despite their huge bargain power, Amazon still prefered to create their own shipping service, so there's no way smaller companies could pressure enough on existing shipping services to reduce shipping cost

For books, independent Dutch booksellers have a cooperative called Libris which allows buyers to buy any book they can order and have it delivered to your local bookshop (no postage to pay) or directly to you, with a part of the profits going to your local bookshop. This is great on the whole, and I use it as a first option for new books (if I don't just buy it in the physical shop itself).

But they use some sort of inventory system which hooks into international publishers' stocks, and when you want to order a book from some of those, the system will cheerfully sell it to you, only for the bookshop to contact you a few days later that that book cannot be ordered.

I've had a few cases where the only way to get a certain book was through Amazon (e.g., the mass market paperback editions of Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive).

is that network of libraries online? I would like to build something like that and I'm still searching for ideas on how to execute it

This webiste : https://www.librairiesindependantes.com/

My experience is that most of the smaller stores actually process the orders fast, but then give the packages to DHL and lately DHL deliver on time only if they feel like it. Last week I had a package that went in the delivery van 3 days in a row before being delivered.

With Amazon however, they probably have an ironclad contract, which they never break. If it says it will be delivered on a specific day, it will also happen

Shopify has a solution to the second bullet, at least here in the US.

Shop Pay provides a common set of login, payment and package tracking services for stores on the Shopify platform. This is great for small stores that don't want to implement Apple or Google Pay.

I have been buying direct from the manufacturer or from small shops since I cancelled my Prime subscription in 2023 [0]. Many of them use Shopify with Shop Pay enabled. It's great. The only negative about it (which I knew going in) was that next-day shipping is (rightfully) much more expensive, if they offer it at all.

As far as postage goes, you're out of luck there. Amazon runs their own logistics and shipping network. They can afford to offer next day delivery at deep discounts no-one else can match.

[0] I cancelled it but apparently still have it, and going to the Prime management page throws an error.

I worked at a startup that made exactly that, but the product failed and the company pivoted to other ways to support local businesses. Most local businesses didn't want to put much effort into getting their products listed online.

I think that’s the hard problem to solve and where a startup might succeed. Anyone can throw together an e-commerce site, but if the item creation is harder than making an insta post then small local shops won’t use it. It would be really hard though, because multichannel purchase and stock tracking and POS integration are all really difficult and all three would be a nightmare.

One weird idea that would maybe work in a big city setting only, for what your are describing, (which I would love to build/see exist one day) is a "warehouse on wheels": Throughout the city you have a fleet of UPS style trucks that contain inventory. The inventory is distributed throught the trucks so that they contain a good ratio of "hot" items and "long tail" items. Then when somebody orders something, the right truck is sent on location to deliver the product. When idle, the trucks go reload on inventory in the different local shops or wait at a charging station.

Unfortunately, the local option has already disappeared for so many product categories. In our city, buying computer peripherals in a shop has become difficult and the last stationary and toy stores are closing down.

While it might be a stretch trying to bring local shop inventories online it might be a first step to at least make their stocked brands / product categories accessible. That's much less data to manage and would already provide a first way to narrow down the options if you need something quick. Google could just ask for that data in its Maps Business Profile metadata, for example.

It's worth remembering that canceling Prime is not the same as abandoning Amazon altogether. You still have the option to turn to Amazon for hard-to-find-elsewhere items, you just have to pay for shipping, or exceed the free-shipping threshold. As far as I can tell, Prime Video is the primary element that is difficult to separate.

There are also vendors that will use Amazon for delivery on the backend. I remember being very surprised when I received an Amazon box for something fulfilled by Walmart!

Try idealo.de.

It will point you to the most affordable site for your product.

Idealo is all right for a comparative overview, but then you still end-up on a site that will slap you with a €7 shipping cost with 5 day shipping, even for "expensive" products..

There’s an option to sort prices with included delivery.

Would you rather have "free shipping" and the cost of logistics priced into the product?

Yes, why not?

The "problem" I have is that they will pretend to compete on price with what Amazon has to offer, except that they will then slap you with a shipping fee which bumps the price up by 10%, compared to the Amazon offer that will ship for free (above a certain price).

And that I find simply disingenuous.

Local shops don't want you to know what is in stock. They want you to visit their shop for 2 items and leave with 5 others you say but didn't need.

and i'll still do that, if it's a small thing that would be silly to ship and the shop is conventiently located, but i have to know what i'm looking for is there first.

I appreciate this logic might work for Ikea, but it doesn't make sense for most local shops: I'm not visiting them at all unless I'm >90% sure they have something I need.