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Comment by batrat | Hacker News Reader

(Rant sorry)

While i'm from EU and I support the movement, after I looked over some numbers it is hard to ditch something like Amazon. 1st thing for me are the prices and monthly I can save at least 100 Euros just from shopping on deals. Second Amazon employs 150k people across EU and this is not a low number (how about them?).

Yes we need alternatives but the rich EU guys also have to invest some. Sometimes I feel that average Joe needs to support the "movement" while rich just mid their own business.

Same goes also with local producers: "support local farmers!". ME: "but the price difference is almost double form Kaufland/Lidl/Carrefour/etc for the same thing!" Sorry, I'm not in a position to just spend more just because...

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Amazon is probably the easiest for me to ditch. It's not really that much cheaper, and when you include shipping it's certainly not cheaper. Shipping times are horrible, search is broken, half of everything is a scam and again, it's not that much cheaper, if at at all.

I can see that being very dependent on what you're buying though.

Add to that how amazon boxes stand out, and are easily targeted by porch thieves.

I don't think that's much of an issue on this side of the pond. Trust has been low enough for a long enough period of time that packages don't get left on porches.

That's area dependent, there are multiple shipping companies that have options for leaving package by the door step and rarely are things stolen. It's completely down to where you live.

I'm quite curious to know where this is a thing, and whether people actually pick that option. FWIW, I live in Paris and that's also an option sometimes.

My sister lives in a fairly remote town in France, and they wouldn't dream of leaving a package unattended. It's not otherwise considered an "unsafe" or "rough" or whatever area.

I'm in Denmark, in a midsize town, but I also lived in a larger city, neither places are having a package dropped on your door step an issue. I do that all the time, if I don't feel like stopping by the package pick up place on my way home. There are absolutely neighbourhoods where I would never pick that options, like certain apartment blocks. Pretty much anywhere with single family houses is fine (in my area). The majority of apartment complexes is also perfect safe, though my sister-in-law did get 25kg of dog food delivered to the apartment below her by mistake and never got the bag back.

Here in Belgium, by default they will bring it to the post office, but I've checked the option to leave it on the porch. There's a camera. Been just fine for years, in a suburb area.

The inventory commingling thing was the thing that made me stop using Amazon, one could never, ever be sure something was legitimate or counterfeit, until it was in one's possession and this made it never feel like it had in the early days.

> "support local farmers!". ME: "but the price difference is almost double form Kaufland/Lidl/Carrefour/etc for the same thing!"

But it isn't the same thing. Locally grown food tends to taste much better and have higher nutritional value.

Plus, something I didn't expect when I started buying most of my food from my local farmer's market-- these farmers are like friends. Every meal I sit down to eat, I have a direct connection to it's source. Of course I go to "grocery stores" for staples, and it always feels so weird, empty, fake.

I have stopped using Amazon all together >1 year ago. Prime Video is as shitty as it gets and most stuff ordered on Amazon is Chinese shovelware in the same rankings as Temu. I give exactly zero shit about same day delivery in 99,99% of the cases.

Amazon shines in customer support though.

Search & categorization is entirely broken, the webshop experience is absolutely abysmal. Just order from better online stores. In Germany, I found these (surprisingly ok):

- Kaufland --> https://www.kaufland.de

- Galaxus Deutschland --> https://www.galaxus.de

- Lidl --> https://www.lidl.de (Schwarz IT is building a European Cloud btw!)

- ShopApotheke --> https://www.shop-apotheke.com/

- Home24 --> https://www.home24.de/

Then, buying specialized stuff on the actual website is often a decent experience. Just price hunt on sites like Idealo (attention though, Axel Springer!) and proceed to the specific stores from there.

https://www.idealo.de/ --> https://www.shop-apotheke.com/

I explicitly avoided mentioning Otto as alternative to Amazon although it is technically the closest. While their shop is ok, prices and customer experience are horrifyingly bad (especially returns and delivery). For an unbiased view:

https://www.otto.de/

In Switzerland amazon never bothered to enter the market, so local competition filled the gap, and it created much better service while doing it.

I speak specifically about galaxus/digitec which often have more and more available stock than actual amazon in EU, any category has 1000s of items, much better organized and findable. Plus it has many great features not seen or usable elsewhere - directly showing evolution of price across the time, reviews which are absolutely not gamed due to tiny market, so I can rely on them very well (while on amazon its tricky at best). You can easily buy used versions of same item at fraction of the price, its showed at top of each product page.

Their guarantee handling is stellar. And for stuff in stock its next day delivery.

Why don't they compete outside of Switzerland?

They started recently:

https://www.galaxus.at/

https://www.galaxus.de/

https://www.galaxus.it/

https://www.galaxus.fr/

Digitec is not available outside Switzerland, as it's the old franchise name which would have been dropped in Switzerland as well, if it wasn't so well known. But Galaxus has all items of Digitec anyway.

I can highly recommend it, a very nice interface and I had very good customer support over the last decade.

wow, didn't know about Galaxus, that's great sorting and sensible filters for things (only looked at dehumidifiers). Will keep it in mind in the future. Amazon is just a big mess of bad UX, impossible to compare things and find what you need

Your arguments ignore externalities. You aren't saving 100 EUR. You pay for it in many other ways. There's no such thing as free lunch, as the saying goes. They're just hijacking your short-term thinking.

He isn't saving 100€ at all if Amazon's prices are higher than the competition, which is almost always true for every product I ever checked during the last five years, at least.

Prices vary wildly across Europe. Countries like Serbia have absolutely insane prices for basic products that are two thirds or half the cost across the border, sold by the same companies.

As much as Europe wants to be a single market sometimes, every country has different cultures and different economic situations. Where I live Amazon is never the cheapest option (and almost never the fastest to deliver), but 20km to the east of me it's a valid competitor to many online storefronts.

Similar here. It doesnt have to be all or nothing. Im in the u.s. and have a cool local co-op. So i buy most commodities at the cheapest grocery store and then some fancy stuff at the co-op to help them stay afloat and support local farmers. It's probably enough if everyone spends to their ability and maybe pushes themselves a little too.

In the summer we also have farners markets and thise are about the same price as the cheapest stores so i switch to them for fruits and veggies.

Using price comparison services here in Sweden I almost never see a better deal on Amazon, at best they have the exact same price as the cheapest deal, seems to be their MO here to check the pricing data from competitors and set their prices exactly the same as the cheapest on offer at the time.

If you can't afford it, don't. But perhaps you will find alternatives for some of your purchases.

In my country in the EU we don't have Amazon, but there does not seem to be a need for it since almost every small and big goods seller has a e-store. The rest we buy from foreign stores with a slight increase in delivery cost.

Thats what every "support local" campaign boils down to - accept suboptimal deals because they are somehow more connected to you. I am glad to sell my services to the US and will buy their services, likewise for EU stuff if it is competitive.

Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices, and Europe is in a position where they can become an independent global actor after WW2. Sure Trump administration isn't making the process pleasant but Europeans should be happy about these changes. And the tariff situation is nothing the EU has not been doing for decades, Trump did escalate it suddenly, but it is not like EU is not imposing massive tariffs to protect its industry, even at the expense of EU members that have no significant stakes in this industry.

> Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices, and Europe is in a position where they can become an independent global actor after WW2. Sure Trump administration isn't making the process pleasant but Europeans should be happy about these changes.

It's not mind-boggling when the US is threatening to take over territories from EU member-states. That's the mind-boggling part: that it is acceptable and normal to the point where it's not even part of the discourse anymore, it's completely normal to have a US president stating a desire to annex Greenland.

Surely Overton's window can't have shifted that much that fast.

On the other hand I do agree on the imperial ambitions part with you, having the USA pull out from being an imperialistic power is definitely something I cheer on, just upsetting they can never seem to do anything with grace and subtlety, have to live up to the stereotypes I guess.

Well my point is more that EU is in a situation where Trump can realistically demand Greenland because without the US we cannot even protect ourselves. We should be outraged at the leaders that brought us to this situation more than Trump, while some other administration could have been less on the nose about it, they are still in a situation where they hold "have all the cards" (exaggerating).

If Trump was not so obnoxious I do not think a lot of people would be welcoming Germany building up its military for example.

> Besides this outrage at the US from EU perspective is mind-boggling, for the first time since I can remember US is moving away from imperialist global polices

What's mind boggling is saying that the US is becoming LESS imperialist, when Trump has threatened to annex both Canada and Greenland, and come out in favor of the most imperialist country in Europe.

Thats them orienting themselves to neighboring territory and not that relevant to EU, aside from Greenland. But contrast that with recent past where US was blowing up middle east for oil, drone striking in Africa, building missile shields in Ukraine, etc.

Now its actively looking to pull its bases out of Europe and calling for Europe to arm itself. A positive change for EU in the grand scheme of things.

If the US actually tried to annex Canada, there would be huge ramifications in the EU. And besides, Trump seems more serious about Greenland: in his address to Congress, he said something along the line of "I think we're going to get it, one way or another". Trump is serious about wanting to steal EU land. You seem to be trying to hand wave that away.

And what about his very clear support of Russia? Is that also a positive change for the EU?

Not handwaving anything away, just saying that EU has blame for its weak bargaining power in this issue and that this kind of escalation creates a situation where it is politically acceptable for EU to significantly invest in military. Imagine talking about building up German military 5 years ago and contrast that to a situation where US is talking about removing military bases from there.

I do not think Trump is supporting Russia, it seems like he does not view them as a threat and is very China focused (which is actually scary since antagonizing China can have far worse consequences). He is also focused on cutting spending/reducing inflation pressure from war/sanctions.

Meanwhile EU, and Germany in particular, built their economic growth on cheap Russian energy - and is now bending over backwards to revive it in a world where energy prices are rising. If Europe took Trumps stance of deescalating Ukraine ASAP, wrapping up the war and ending sanctions - our economy would recover much faster. And it would give EU the resources to build a proper military. Even if Ukraine got all of its territory back its going to be a humanitarian disaster zone for decades and a burden on the rest of the country. I really do not see a winning scenario Europe is pushing for in Ukraine.

I agree about the cheap Russian energy, but i disagree that deescalating would get you anywhere with someone like putin on the other side. I'm no politician but it's always been obvious this never stops with him. It's no longer time to roll over (though i think that was a while ago)

> It's no longer time to roll over

That should be the EU's position. I'm sure the citizens of the EU countries would pay more to equip their military with enough resources to do so.

And for some things (and most tech things), "support local" isn't an option.

How do I "support local" when purchasing a micro-format PC for running a Cloud node? There's no chip-fab in town. The parts are sourced to two or three different countries.

Hard disagree. For me, "support local" means paying a little more for goods that are 10x better instead of commoditized crap fully optimized for enshitification.

Thats not support local, that is buy higher quality - and while demagogues try to conflate these two - it is very rarely the case in my experience. In cases where it is - you do not need buy local movements at all - they should be the default.

Buying local is usually more expensive because of economies of scale and comparative advantages. And they are often less scrutinized because of smaller reach. Same thing with "organic" produce actually being more dangerous to eat than processed food in terms of poisoning/bacteria.

They aren't suboptimal where I am. US products are cheaper, but they are routinely less healthy, more addictive, and poorer quality than the alternatives.

Its fine if you can't afford it or don't want to pay the difference, but by and large they are not suboptimal, at all.

Ok, don't buy them? You always had that decision.

what's your point?

Non-US companies ALSO employ non-US workers

We must be buying different things if you think Amazon is cheap in the EU.

I find almost everything can be had cheaper elsewhere these days, except the Chinese junk like you find on Temu, the enshitification has well and truly sunk in.

I always paste products I find right back into Google and more often than not find them cheaper elsewhere

I guess people just buy different stuff and have different experiences then.

The last physical thing I bought on Amazon was a Brita glass carafe.

44.99€

The cheapest I can find elsewhere is 49.9O€ with 4.99€ of shipping. Otherwise it's mostly 54.99€ and it's even 59.90€ on Brita's own store.

The other physical stuff in my order history of the last three months are orders made for relatives because they found that it was cheaper on Amazon and wanted to take advantage of my Premium subscription.

So, as always, YMMV.

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