[HN Gopher] People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart
___________________________________________________________________
People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart
Author : billyharris
Score : 92 points
Date : 2021-08-17 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| SeanFerree wrote:
| Walmart usually has better prices. It's just that going there is
| a pain. I do prefer going to a store and looking at some things
| before I purchase them. With the speed of delivery it's hard to
| argue against Amazon though
| FREETELEVISION wrote:
| I ordered six lbs of Salmon Fillet for pickup today. Website said
| my order was cancelled, however weight adjusted for 4 lbs. Then
| got a notice my order was ready. They billed me for 4 lbs. But
| they gave me 16 lbs. This happened once before for 32 lbs. They
| always give me a couple FREE. Just on salmon. LOL!!!! I eat
| salmon everday, cheaeper than chicken at this rate.
| HenryKissinger wrote:
| > Propelled in part by surging demand during the pandemic, people
| spent more than $610 billion on Amazon over the 12 months ending
| in June, according to Wall Street estimates compiled by the
| financial research firm FactSet. Walmart on Tuesday posted sales
| of $566 billion for the 12 months ending in July.
|
| $610 billion is starting to resemble the tax revenue of some
| nation states.
| smnrchrds wrote:
| $610 billion is more than the GDP of 190 out of 213 countries
| in the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
| pope_meat wrote:
| And some of those 190 even manage to provide healthcare to
| their citizens, there's no "oh they're just part time
| citizens, gotta be a citizen for 40 hours a week to qualify
| for a doctor"
| swiley wrote:
| Those countries probably also require upfront price
| estimates and the hospital admins might not be trained
| experts in gaming regulation.
| handrous wrote:
| Price controls. It's always (AFAI can tell) price
| controls, whether de facto or de jure. That seems to be
| _the_ uniting factor in successful healthcare systems.
| Even Singapore, the closest thing I know of to a "free
| market healthcare _can_ work! " darling, has some price
| controls (and uses the _very real_ threat of imposing
| more to keep the rest of the prices under control).
| mike_d wrote:
| When a shopper enters a Walmart they have a fixed amount of money
| in their pocket and generally a good idea of what they want. You
| might get them to grab a candy bar, or buy the next grade up of
| tires, but it is effectively shifting dollars that would have
| been spent there already. Revenue growth is all about adding more
| essential items to the store and eliminating trips to other
| retailers.
|
| Amazon has much more discretionary budget to try and extract from
| their customers, so time on site is absolutely critical.
|
| I'd say the two aren't even competitive at this point. Amazon
| will need many years to build out a robust vertically integrated
| grocery logistics network that reaches Walmart customers. A few
| Whole Foods in rich neighborhoods isn't going to cut it. On the
| other hand, Walmart will never figure out how to sell stuff
| online without losing money, and will probably kill itself trying
| to chase Amazon for some unknown reason.
| majormajor wrote:
| > When a shopper enters a Walmart they have a fixed amount of
| money in their pocket and generally a good idea of what they
| want. You might get them to grab a candy bar, or buy the next
| grade up of tires, but it is effectively shifting dollars that
| would have been spent there already. Revenue growth is all
| about adding more essential items to the store and eliminating
| trips to other retailers.
|
| People with credit cards shop at Walmart too, and there's a
| significant amount of marketing effort done to convince people
| to get new items they weren't planning on while they're there.
| Plenty of people there can be sold new things without going
| into a "oh, this new toy for my kid on the aisle endcap looks
| nice, time to put away the dozen eggs because I only have X
| dollars allocated for this trip" same-net-spending reaction.
|
| (Anecdotally, my behavior is basicaly the opposite of what you
| describe: I got to Amazon when I already want a specific thing,
| and I find their browsing experience god-awful. I go to a
| physical store when I want to browse or shop without direction.
| Maybe I'll end up with a new shirt, or a book, or a video game,
| or a plant... maybe nothing...)
| Grakel wrote:
| The article doesn't mention Walmart's website, which has become
| very good and widely used, especially as a more trustworthy
| source for real products than Amazon.com.
|
| Also the article is worded as if Walmart is in decline- the
| future is bright for both of these companies, not that anyone is
| concerned.
| silisili wrote:
| Walmart is getting better, but still way behind on the web
| front. They'll show you things in stock, then tell you it's out
| of stock upon checkout. Go back to product page, shows in stock
| again. They also use way, way too many captchas. Lastly, they
| divide walmart.com from walmart pickup and delivery for no
| reason. Some things you order on the .com side are only
| 'shippable' if your local store has it. So, it's pickup and
| delivery yet doesn't show up on that side. I laughed because
| when I ordered a fishing rod for my child, it was literally a
| fishing rod leaned against my house. No box, label, etc.
|
| I still try to use them as I trust their products more than
| Amazon. I love their new tool lineup, quality stuff at a decent
| price, with next day or 2 day delivery. I really like that for
| returns, they'll come pick it up. AMZ charges extra for that.
|
| Amazon has much better CS though, hands down.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _they divide walmart.com from walmart pickup and delivery
| for no reason_
|
| I can hazard an informed guess as to why that is -- they
| built .com as an independent company, in order to get it off
| the ground faster and with less interference from the brick
| and mortar side.
|
| End result: quick iteration, but now two completely separate
| supply chains. You'd be amazing how complicated warehousing,
| inventory, shipping, etc. get when you've got 2 SKUs for
| every item + a bunch of hacks to duct tape everything
| together.
|
| And it's not trivial to reconverged them, when you're as
| optimized as Walmart logistics is.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| HomeDepot and Bestbuy are what I would hold up as the best
| websites. Target is decent too, except they started allowed
| resellers and I was not as easily able to find how to
| restrict to items sold only by Target.
| floxy wrote:
| >HomeDepot and Bestbuy are what I would hold up as the
| best websites.
|
| https://www.mcmaster.com/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| McMaster is certainly very nice, but I was considering
| broad retail businesses with lots of physical locations
| and lots of variety in items sold.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Home Depot is good, but their iOS app still lacks a lot
| of polish around selecting a store, payments, and list
| management.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What I also like about Target and Hope Depot is I can put
| my phone number in when I am checking out at the store,
| and the purchases will show up in my account online so I
| can reference them later or not need to keep the physical
| receipt for returns.
| silisili wrote:
| I know I'm starting to sound like a shill, but I'm just
| impressed with the progress they've made recently... but
| Walmart does this too.
|
| Any in store purchase made with a credit card saved in
| your account shows up in your purchase history. Don't
| even need to type in a phone number :). That's actually
| really new, they emailed about it sometime in the last
| month and I can confirm it works.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Definitely, although I wish Home Depot wouldn't ask each
| time about the digital receipt. They should (imho)
| provide a setting to always receive the digital receipt
| copy (with the email address associated to a credit card
| number).
| [deleted]
| cpwright wrote:
| Home Depot stores the receipts by credit card; so that if
| you use a card saved to your online account you
| automatically will see your in-store purchases show up.
| endisneigh wrote:
| I'm genuinely curious - why use the app instead of the
| website?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| iPhone is always with me, a computer less so. If I'm
| scanning an item's barcode to source or add to cart, need
| a camera on the phone. If I'm looking in aisles for a
| part, need the phone for aisle and bin #. I remember
| something while I'm spending time out with the family or
| running errands? Mobile app. "Mobile first lifestyle."
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I use the app over the mobile website because its data
| requirements are lower and my reception is poor in-store.
| slownews45 wrote:
| I was bummed about the target third party stuff - how
| hard is it to add a target only toggle?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There is currently a Sold By filter where you can choose
| Target when I just checked, but it has also not been
| there so I wonder if they are doing A/B testing or
| something. Or maybe I missed it.
| mindslight wrote:
| Target was good 5 years ago. These days they're pushing
| more and more items into "same day delivery" only with
| some gimmicky subscription service. No thanks - I'm
| looking for a transaction, not a long term relationship.
| If you really want to charge for shipping, then reduce
| your prices so that the cost of shipping is no longer
| built in.
|
| And yeah, the "marketplace" cancer is everywhere. It's
| turned Amazon into trash, yet traditional companies
| seemingly can't help but follow in their footsteps. If I
| want to sort through vendor reputations for gensym-
| branded white label gadgets, I'll go to eBay or
| AliExpress.
|
| FWIW the Home Depot website is much faster if you use
| noscript to block all of their surveillance vendors.
| Probably the worst website I've seen with regards to that
| - by default I think they backhaul all of your mouse
| movement.
| monksy wrote:
| Menards is great for this. The stores tend to fullfill
| orders and ship. Also, you have flexibility in how you
| get it shipped. Also, they tend to show live POS stock
| counts. (Expect 1 item to be 0 left)
|
| They're not the best in shipping.. but I haven't see the
| garbage resellers on their platform.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Good engineering teams working with KISS frameworks build
| good sites. Counter example: Sears.
|
| Resellers are a necessary evil for warehouse retail. You
| need the scale for margin and product diversity for long
| tail sales, but you've got to keep a tight leash on them.
| I can't begin to express how unreliable their submitted
| metadata about listed items is.
|
| I feel like auditing and kicking people off the platform
| would honestly be the best approach, although that'd
| probably just cause more fly by night "new" vendor
| signups.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Resellers are a necessary evil for warehouse retail.
|
| As long as there is a simple option to not clutter my
| search results with them, it does not affect me whether
| or not a retailer also sells their website to resellers.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| >Lastly, they divide walmart.com from walmart pickup and
| delivery for no reason.
|
| This is actually changing very soon, and both results will be
| on the same site.
| coding123 wrote:
| Oh, another example of that local vs distant store thing is
| that it's kinda up to the store. You may order a BROWN
| blanket, but your local store is somehow notified and they
| go, OH I HAVE THAT BLANKET! And then they switch you from it
| being delivered from far away to having some guy that's
| getting off work that lives near you drop it off. And then
| you open it up and it's that BLUE blanket you already saw
| locally and didn't want!!!!!
| wisemanwillhear wrote:
| > Walmart is getting better, but still way behind on the web
| front. They'll show you things in stock, then tell you it's
| out of stock upon checkout. Go back to product page, shows in
| stock again.
|
| 2 weeks ago I added a Logitech mouse to my cart which Amazon
| claimed would arrive in 2 days per the product page. Upon
| checkout I was informed that it was unavailable to ship and I
| would get an e-mail when they knew it would ship. Going back
| to the product page and refreshing the 2 day promised arrival
| date was still there. It arrived 6 days later. Seems like
| Amazon has similar problems.
| slownews45 wrote:
| This can be depending on a delivery address - sometimes
| Amazon will have local delivery delays (some oregon areas
| had delivery partner issues a while back). Not sure if that
| might be part of it.
| OJFord wrote:
| > I really like that for returns, they'll come pick it up.
| AMZ charges extra for that.
|
| Oof, not in the UK. (At least not with Prime.)
|
| Perhaps not quite as easy (for small enough items) as when I
| mostly commuted, and could print a label and leave it in an
| outgoing mail pile, but certainly from home I way prefer that
| than going to a post office (even in the absence of
| coronavirus restrictions).
|
| I actually bought a printer for that purpose. A direct
| thermal label printer, because that's all I needed it for
| (and it was cheaper, has no ink to run out/dry out during a
| period of no use, etc.).
| silisili wrote:
| It actually depends on who their partner is. In my last
| city, it was USPS, so I could in fact put it with the mail.
|
| Where I live now, Amazon delivers but uses UPS for returns.
| I can either drop it off at a Kohl's location, a UPS store,
| or pay for them to come pick it up.
|
| Normally it's not a huge hassle, but it's a really nice
| gesture to me, especially for heavy items. I almost kept a
| TV stand, new in box, that I didn't need because I didn't
| feel like carrying it back into the store. Luckily, that's
| when I noticed they'll do free pickup on returns.
| OJFord wrote:
| Oh interesting. We tend not to really have variations
| like that across the UK (not having different states in
| the same way), so beyond remote islands etc. (by post
| code) and things like Uber/Deliveroo rolling out city by
| city/town by town, it's all just the same.
|
| Amazon uses various couriers to deliver and return here
| (even me being in one location, in London, but also the
| same in the country) but when you select a return only
| Hermes offer pick-up. (Otherwise there's Amazon locker,
| Royal Mail print label, Royal Mail drop-off, various
| other drop-off places of the kind that are a sort of
| 'side gig' for a grocer or newsagent, etc.)
| nerfhammer wrote:
| One thing I appreciate about home depot's web site: they'll
| tell you not only whether the item is in stock, but exactly
| where in a given store it's located
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| And most importantly they have only one listing for the
| same item. In Amazon and Walmart you have multiple listings
| of the same product by different sellers at different
| prices. In Amazon it's really annoying to see several pages
| of basically the same product.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Amazon tries to coalesce these pages together in a single
| product-detail page with multiple offers. Sellers
| frequently try to avoid this coalescing (because
| otherwise, they're only competing on price). This could
| be as simple as pad printing a meaningless 5-6 character
| brand onto the product [making it technically different]
| or by making the description slightly different.
| silisili wrote:
| Yeah, it's a tough problem to solve. But I understand
| their complaint, it's often an identical product with a
| different name painted on it, pages and pages.
|
| My favorite was a handheld coffee grinder. The item was
| unbranded, and the manual had some brand name manually
| scratched out with an inkpen everywhere it was mentioned.
| It's actually a nice coffee grinder, believe it or not.
| silisili wrote:
| Walmart app does this too actually. The main problem is
| that their inventory tracker is wildly inaccurate. I went
| looking for an item they claimed to have 4 of, and they in
| fact had none.
|
| I think for a store as busy and understaffed as Walmart,
| real inventory gets to be a big guessing game.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Why? They know what items are being delivered to the
| store, they know when they are delivered and they know
| what they sold. Ignoring inventory numbers being slightly
| off due to shrinkage, if you just connect the systems you
| can get a pretty accurate real time count.
| r00fus wrote:
| Target does this as well. Super useful to get in and out,
| limiting my contact with potentially infectious people -
| though I usually use their curbside.
| tangoed wrote:
| The Walmart.com and pickup/delivery division on their website
| is not a thing anymore. They seem to be testing a new beta
| version of the website, and I got to try it yesterday. I have
| Walmart plus and this is how it went:
|
| One seamless search option, no pickup/delivery and
| Walmart.com options. I added everything, including groceries
| and other non groceries to my cart. I selected delivery. Some
| items were not available in my local store but it didn't
| matter. Walmart automatically divided my order into two
| parts, where it decided to ship me some of the things I
| ordered (chips and club soda) that weren't available at my
| local store. It was definitely great experience and the UI
| was clean. I didn't get any out of stock errors at checkout
| too. Can't wait to use it full time.
|
| The only reason I use Walmart is that I don't trust the
| products from Amazon anymore, even when they are sold by
| Amazon. I once ordered shampoo sold my Amazon that was
| obviously fake, and then I searched around and realized
| Amazon has a program where they gather the products from
| different sellers and put it in one huge bin and call all of
| them sold by Amazon.com
| silisili wrote:
| That's great to hear - thanks for sharing. I'm also a plus
| member, but I guess not in the beta. The app and website
| both still segregate the two.
|
| How you describe it working is exactly how I've always
| wished it would work. Glad to hear it.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| How do I get access to this beta? I would shop at Walmart a
| lot more but their website has been hot garbage as far back
| as I can remember. The exact scenario you mentioned is what
| makes it a miserable experience. I just tried it again
|
| 1) I put in my zipcode and checkmark my store. 2) I search
| for "AA batteries" 1) I put in my zipcode again and
| checkmark my store because it forgot the previous search.
| 3) I select In store pickup 4) As I scroll it co-mingles
| results that are in store with results that require a
| shipment. Seems like it does this for items that are not
| sold by walmart so while it correctly filtered out items
| sold by walmart that require shipment, whats the point if
| items not sold by walmart are still there.
|
| As a sidenote, it does not tell me where in the store the
| item is. I just want to get item location, go into the
| store and pick it up.
|
| Back in 2016 I tried the ship to store service. When I
| arrived, I went to the back of the store in order to pick
| it up. I was the only one there. I signed in on their kiosk
| and then waited. The clerk disappeared into the back and I
| kid you not, it took 30 mins to retrieve my order. She
| couldn't care less about getting my package. Keep in mind
| that I was the only one there and their fancy screen was
| listing my name as the only one in the queue!
|
| The cherry on top of all of this is that their prices and
| selection are not always competitive with Amazon in my
| experience. It would be fine given that I am guaranteed to
| get legitimate equipment and get it same day but all the
| issues above steal enough time that it makes it not worth
| it most of the time.
|
| I assume Walmart Labs is developing all this stuff. They
| must have better work life balance because their output is
| nowhere near the quality of Amazon.
|
| I find this problem with Target to an extent as well. They
| have a better ship to store experience but I have found
| that their inventory status on their website has no
| correlation to reality whatsoever and their search is
| terrible. I have been trying to build an app to scrape all
| their items so I could build a personal tool that works
| better. I really want to avoid Amazon if I can but the
| competitors just make it so hard to do so.
| silisili wrote:
| I can't say the experience has changed a lot on the
| pickup side. I bought a few hooks and thought I'd zip on
| by for curbside. Huge mistake. Every spot was filled,
| people hanging out of their car looking miserable like
| they'd been there a long time. I made a loop and parked
| while I assessed everything, and in the five or so
| minutes I was there, never saw an employee. This was just
| last week. I'll definitely not do pickup again.
| gurchik wrote:
| > I once ordered shampoo sold my Amazon that was obviously
| fake, and then I searched around and realized Amazon has a
| program where they gather the products from different
| sellers and put it in one huge bin and call all of them
| sold by Amazon.com
|
| This is a common scam. Third party sellers will send a fake
| product to Amazon to be FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon). When
| someone buys this product from the seller on the product's
| webpage, the seller is hoping the buyer will actually
| receive a genuine Amazon product instead that happens to
| already be in the warehouse. The buyer will be happy and
| will not complain, so the seller receives their money.
| However that fake product is still sitting in the
| warehouse, and when some unlucky buyer receives the fake
| product, they'll demand a refund. Some unlucky third party
| seller will have to foot the bill for that refund.
|
| Youtuber "chaseontwowheels" ordered a $6000 camera Sold and
| Shipped by Amazon.com. He instead received a box of rocks.
| He got a refund from a suspicious Amazon and shipped him
| another camera. While filming a video about the incident,
| he opened the box and it was rocks again. He ended up
| buying the camera from B&H and finally got the legitimate
| product.
|
| https://www.diyphotography.net/buyer-orders-6000-camera-
| amaz...
|
| I've run into a similar problem. I ordered an electric
| beard trimmer and the box looked new but there was hair
| inside so it was obviously used. There were a lot of recent
| reviews about this from different sellers. I'm assuming
| some third party seller sent a bunch of returned stuff to
| Amazon and they threw it all into the same bin.
| TMWNN wrote:
| >Walmart is getting better, but still way behind on the web
| front. They'll show you things in stock, then tell you it's
| out of stock upon checkout.
|
| Anyone who's tried to buy a video card or other in high-
| demand item from Amazon knows that the same thing happens
| there.
| tyingq wrote:
| WalMart does also have 3rd party sellers where you have to
| watch what you buy. I suppose Walmart has a broader variety of
| in-house sold than Amazon though.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Walmart has a filter option on the left side to show only
| Walmart sourced products. (Unlike Amazon).
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Amazon still has one too. It is just harder and harder to
| get to the point were you are presented the option which
| might explain why people now spend more time at Amazon.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They definitely removed it years ago, at least for me.
| The option to check mark "Amazon.com" as the seller was
| there and then it wasn't over and over, and then
| eventually just disappeared.
|
| Edit: I just searched shelf and hot sauce on Amazon.Com
| on iOS Safari, and the filter options do not show any way
| to restrict to items sold by Amazon.com.
| oliveshell wrote:
| The option to filter by seller is still there-- barely.
|
| It only shows up if you restrict your search to a
| specific department, e.g. "Sports and Outdoors".
| zzt123 wrote:
| That's just makeup over the underlying commingling, no?
| [deleted]
| dave5104 wrote:
| I thought the problem with that was even if you chose to
| "buy" a product from Amazon, if a 3rd party seller is
| using Amazon's warehousing, Amazon intermingles products
| that they source themselves and from the 3rd party? So,
| you could be getting a product sourced by Amazon, or you
| could be getting a product sourced by a 3rd party.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is also a problem, and they used to have the
| commingling fact displayed in an easy to find place on
| their website, but now that is hidden somewhere, or
| removed from what I can tell.
| handrous wrote:
| So does Target, I think. Becoming a shady online flea-market
| must be _incredibly_ lucrative, since everyone who can seems
| to choose that over just being, like, a normal store, but
| online.
| dawnerd wrote:
| Target at least isn't quite as bad and they do seem to vet
| their partner sellers a lot better than the other
| marketplaces. They also make it very clear it's a partner
| instead of hiding it like Amazon does.
| handrous wrote:
| You're right that they're not all _equivalently_
| terrible, and Target 's better about it than Amazon and
| Wal Mart.
| bitcuration wrote:
| Trustworth? not sure sure. Walmart 3rd party seller is hard to
| contact for a return in case of problem. Walmart seems set up a
| way encouraging shop from Walmart own source than 3rd party on
| Walmart web site, which I don't blame them as that's where most
| of Amazon's problem came from.
|
| However, Amazon does have one key appealing, regardless who's
| the seller Amazon almost guarantees the free return, where in
| Walmart you'd better take it back to Walmart store even it's
| sold by Walmart themselves.
|
| The return policy is the one single reason Amazon trumped all
| other online e-commerce which is not hard to see but difficult
| to clone.
| overtonwhy wrote:
| Ethically they're the same and I boycott both and encourage
| everyone else to do the same. Vote with your money for how you
| want the world to work.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I want well-priced consumer goods, broad selection, and
| fast/easy logistics. I do vote with my wallet and Amazon earns
| a lot of share of it.
| yann2 wrote:
| Long way to go on revenues -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_in...
| zamadatix wrote:
| According to the page those numbers refer to FY 2019 or FY
| 2020. Per the second paragraph of TFA for the last 12 months
| Amazon has an estimated 610 billion in sales (which are part of
| revenue), not FY aligned. This actually lines up pretty closely
| to just naively expanding the y/y growth rate on the page you
| linked over time. In reality it slightly outperformed that.
| yann2 wrote:
| Walmart is ahead of Amazon by some 60B in q1 q2 rev and its
| increasing as covid effect/ecom sales start dropping. They
| will easily be ahead 100-120B ahead at the end of the year.
| Amazon cant touch those number any time soon unless covid
| suddenly surges and lockdowns restart. People are sick of
| sitting at home and going to Walmart is entertainment for a
| large segment of the population.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Walmart has a grocery service at multiple locations where I live
| without excessive costs for pantry items. Amazon cant compete
| there.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| I use both sites for shopping. Walmart has free (roughly) two day
| shipping if you spend $35+. For bulkier items and (frequently
| IME) better prices, I prefer Walmart to Amazon Prime.
|
| I have major concerns over fraudulent or quid pro quo reviews on
| Amazon, and the prices generally aren't the best around. Free (or
| rather included) next day shipping is great though.
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Is there a better way than google shopping to find deals across
| sites for products?
|
| I try to avoid using Amazon out of practical (e.g. products often
| being cheaper elsewhere, often have less worry about getting some
| SKU-identical knockoff that amazon absorbed from some FBA hack)
| and sometimes ideological (a CEO who rides a particularly phallic
| rocket into space and then gloats about it while his employees
| are treated like subhuman machines is an infuriating character to
| say the least).
|
| However, I'm not sure if there is a reliable non-Google way to
| search a wide variety of other shopping sites without getting
| hits for bad aliexpress or ebay auctions for clearly stolen /
| counterfeit items. I already own a pair of Abibas and that is
| more than enough :/
| 1-6 wrote:
| Slickdeals, CamelCamelCamel
| bluGill wrote:
| Find small companies with a web presence and buy from them.
| They type that ship their own product. You will pay a tiny bit
| more, but because they know their product, and so the
| description on the website will reflect that. We have 4
| different devices that will work, here is why you would choose
| each. In depth reviews. If you still have questions someone
| will answer the phone when you call who knows something about
| the product in question and so can direct you to the right one
| for you.
| wombat-man wrote:
| I kinda gave up on amazon too at this point.
|
| I'm at the point where I trust a few stores to not sell me
| bogus stuff. Target, Walmart, Costco, REI. All are good. Yes I
| know walmart and target have 3rd party sellers, just don't buy
| from those.
|
| I am okay with paying a little more, or getting a slightly
| worse deal to get something I know is "genuine" or well made.
| Especially if I plan on putting it in/on my body.
|
| I know ethically walmart isn't way better. But afaik they still
| have old fashioned relationships with their product sourcers.
| Meaning they're probably buying all their cereals/foods
| directly from manufacturers, for example.
| swiley wrote:
| IMO: like most of the web it's about accumulating bookmarks.
|
| Newegg is really great for electronics in general
|
| Sparkfun/mouser/adafruit is great for hobbiest parts.
|
| For specific niche stuff check your favorite forums.
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