Just this week, I ordered clothing from LL Bean, a book from AbeBooks, and some food items from Thrive. All my orders arrived within a few days, about the same as with Amazon Prime.
I still have an Amazon account but I'm finding little difference (and even better pricing sometimes) going to other ecommerce sites.
I find that a lot. Often the manufacturer will have their own ecommerce enabled website with better prices. I quit buying from amazon a few years ago aside from a few Kindle versions of books because they were $2.99. I use amazon to check reviews on items but buy them somewhere else. Half the time I end up buying from ebay and when I do, I sort by distance or will at least look at the seller's location. I won't buy from anyone in a blue state or major city if I can help it.
>>For a long time, Amazon did have a leg up on the other online retailers. But most everybody else has caught up with regard to the logistics of online retail.
I have my doubts about their third party retailing business. I’d bet they lose money on 80% of their third party retailers, since the overhead of setting up the relationship and stocking a lot of low volume merchandise likely takes a lot of both call center time and warehouse space.
Odds are that the new management will find a way to terminate third parties who are either hard to deal with or have low volume products.