Amazon, Walmart, Etsy... my kingdom for a marketplace that doesn't become just a dumping ground for shady fly-by-night dropshippers.
* One cart for everything you need to order
* Fairly predictable shipping and tracking, especially for FBA stuff vs. the random shipping companies vs random shippers you have never heard about or weird shipping options selected by the seller (i.e. ID checks required where that makes no sense at all, preventing the carrier from just dropping the package at the door when you're not home)
* Global shipping with tariffs/fees included in the checkout price - brand stores often don't even ship at all outside their operational area
* The ability to get your money back with high confidence when there are problems vs. smaller sellers that just ghost you.
Amazon has been doing their best to reduce these advantages by making it harder to report problems with orders and also having more sellers that do their own unpredictable shipping.
Of course, I'm still using Apple Pay, so that may not work for everyone.
The return experience is great, because it has to be. You buy so much crap because of drop-shippers and their search is atrocious due to paid placement.
If you know what you want (a Thermoscan was one of my last purchases), it can be cheaper to go elsewhere, you don’t deal with their search “engine”, and you don’t help Bezos buy the next election. My context is European, but I really don’t agree that Amazon is that great anymore.
There’s plenty of stuff I find cheaper in other places, plus I’ll know it’s authentic and not a drop-shipped counterfeit. Amazon was tremendous once, but that’s gone.
You can now only order from their website which I am more than happy to do as their customer service is excellent.
actually... they gave up a while ago and have an amazon store.. it's been a few years IIRC
I closed my Amazon account, a few years ago, for similar reasons (both platforms seem to become the dumping grounds for brokens, defectives, and otherwise abandonables).
Most items I'll now purchase in-person, at a store – I want to feel the clothing's thickness, smell the hardware's newness, and/or pay more for warranted IRL customer support. Mandatory in-person purchases are memory (RAM or SSD), only because they have a supplier chain-of-custody, without mixed seller bins (which Amazon is attempting to resolve, albeit decades too late IMHO).
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Random shoutout to Duluth Trading Company (not-affiliated, no stock owned – just a great brand): I drive 2.5 hours round-trip, once a year, to visit one of their clothing stores. If you haven't worn their firehose contractor pants, you're missing out on the incredibility of 3% spandex pants – thick, breathable, don't tear... and when you feel them in person you will absolutely not care about their pricetag. They have traditional US wwXhh mens-sizing, but also three separate "fits" (tightnesses).
If you're a fattietradesman (like me), trying things on is essential. Really glad to see certainly higher-end storefronts "coming back," as these customers demand quality.
Just wish they sold computers – although I did visit my first MicroCenter, recently: WOW! (Reminiscent of early-2000s Fry's Electronics, but smaller/better).
And somehow no local retailer had a corded phone (had to order off Amazon, unfortunately... friend's account) – not even the local telco! Exception: expensive fax machines (?!), with attached corded handset – in 2026.
The alternative is “here’s 450 other matches to your search that are definitely not what you’re looking for, that may be counterfeit, and may or may not give your kid dermatitis.”
I think some companies should lean more into that. We’ll pay for shipping if it spares us from those “skimming off the top”.