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Comment by mananaysiempre | Hacker News Reader

> 20 years ago they had excellent customer service, now

... you will use them anyway because, customer service or no, there’s a good chance you don’t have a choice that doesn’t cost half again as much. (Regional availability may vary.)

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They aren’t cheaper anymore. The “real” branded stuff is usually more expensive on amazon than straight from the manufacturers website. The “cheap” fake aliexpress stuff is just that charged at a premium. You can find the same exact product images even on the same products on ebay from probably the same merchants listing on both marketplaces.

It has changed dramatically over the past 5 or so years into this.

At least for stuff like electronics, random plastic household items etc EU Amazon isn't particularly cheap. Branded stuff costs about the same in many smaller stores, and random Chinese no-name brands can be bought from Aliexpress cheaper.

For the EU, use this search engine:

https://geizhals.eu/

Amazon is not nearly the cheapest or most reliable one for hardware.

I am sorry but this is insane cope, Amazon is still on-top everywhere, also in Europe.

Nonsense. Literally the first random example I chose:

https://geizhals.eu/supermicro-h13ssl-n-bulk-mbd-h13ssl-n-b-...

  Cheapest price: EUR 675
  Amazon price:   EUR 875

The vendors with the cheapest price have good customer reviews as well, unlike Amazon, which has terrible ones.

In Poland and neighboring countries, Amazon has some serious competition from Allegro.

In terms of usage, maybe, in terms of service, probably not. Often the biggest dogs are not the best. They have inertia and marketing, and that's why they're the big dogs. Not because they're providing the best, or the cheapest, good or service.

Depends on how local you go, there are local alternatives that are bigger in their domain for almost every domain in most parts of Europe. Amazon is much much smaller outside of USA and there are plenty of alternatives with better and cheaper service.

Also not true in Switzerland. Amazon was ranked #4 overall, #2 in tech, based on sales in 2024, with a massive distance to the leaders. It's not that popular around here, and with current U.S. boycotts I expect it to drop further this year.

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